Passing Strangers
by if.the.plane.goes.down
Summary: In the daytime Kakashi and Kurenai are nothing to each other. But when night falls....
1. Passing Strangers

Passing Strangers

_**Good bye my almost lover**_

_**I'm trying not to think about you**_

When I wake up, the sunlight feels like Heaven on my skin. Warm and inviting. Golden rays wrapping their arms around my body. Seeping deep down in there to stain my marrow. I sit up and stretch my arms over my head. Inviting it to take over my whole body. For a moment I think I'm alone.

Then I remember last night.

I turn to my right. Kakashi is already up. Sitting up in bed, bare with the covers pulled up to his waist. Lazily flipping through the pages of a book. I'm fascinated with him all over again. Watching the methodical way his dark eyes scan every line. Revealing nothing. And yet last night I had seen something in him. Felt something.

That was for sure.

The sunlight looks beautiful on him. Making his vanilla skin glow. Making me want to reach out and touch him. And pull that beautiful light down to me. I stick my fingers in my mouth and gently bite down to control myself. There will be time for that later, Kurenai, I chide myself. Right now, I just want to watch.

His hair is sticking up in all directions. A bed head reminiscent of last nights misadventures through the bed covers. I can still feel those silver strands in my fingers. Silver like magic. Like stardust. Starlight catching the sunshine and holding on tight, letting it leap through each individual strand.

I can make out each color that makes up the silver. A few white pieces, some darker gray ones. A few strands falling down into his bare face. His mask is down and I can't help but stare at him. No matter how many times I see it, I always marvel at how beautiful he is. Always.

Kakashi turns his face just slightly to look at me. Chin titled up in that dangerous way that's so attractive to me. And there's something sly in his eyes. I get the feeling that he's known all along I was staring at him.

For some reason this makes me a little embarrassed. I feel a warm red blush spread across my cheeks. The slightest smile turns up the corner of his mouth. He lowers his eyes and folds down the corner of the page in the book he's reading. Slowly. Meticulously. Making sure to crease it good. I know he's stalling. Trying to drive me crazy waiting for him to touch me. And it's working.

By the time he closes the book I feel ready to explode. He places it neatly on his lap. Then, he turns, looks at me, and reaches out for me. I feel one strong hand at the base of my spine, the other grabbing my hand. Kakashi loops his fingers around mine, intertwining them, and pulls me like that close to him. I hold on tight, and the connection of our fingers feels so strangely intimate that it gives me chills.

He leans down, lets his lips brush my fingertips, and smiles, showing dimples that he's secretly insecure about. Something to do with his masculinity.

He says. "Hi."

Somehow, it' not so odd that he says 'Hi 'instead of 'Good morning'. Kakashi is different from most other men, from most other people, in ways so insignificant that you can't help but notice. Everything he does is a little off like that. But so right. It's the quirks that make me want/love him. Whichever one it is.

I caress his fingers softly, slowly, smoothly. Not to rush anything. Just because I'm hungry for him. Dreamed all night of touching him, while he slept peacefully beside me. Probably thinking on other things.

I watched him sleep until my own eyelids got too heavy, and then submitted myself. He is a cherubim in his sleep. Face so peaceful. Relaxed. Content. And I loved it that I had satisfied him. Something that could never be the other away around. Because I am sure now that I can never get enough of him.

I still want him now. So bad it hurts, and I understand why junkies get so addicted. When it feels good you can't let go. You just can't stop. Strangely though, watching him sleep gives me a sort of haze of semi satisfaction. With his eyes closed, Kakashi seems so vulnerable. Like a child. A face he'd never be open enough to show to anyone when awake.

I wrap my arms around his waist.

Say "Hi, yourself." And smile.

His skin is so warm. I put my face against his stomach. Relax against those taut muscles. Kiss his belly button softly. He doesn't react, but I can feel his eyes on me. He still smells like last night's love. And I feel another flutter of excitement. I want to wrap myself up in his skin. I trace his belly button softly with my fingertip. A light circle and hear him take a deep breath. Something inside me shudders. I want him closer. I need him closer.

I look up into his face. He only has one eye open. The brown one. I know it's because the left one intimidates people. Past lovers. He told me. It's the color. It's the scar. Which is so vivid up this close to his face. His mouth sets in a taut line when I reach up and caress that thick line of raised flesh. Smooth it over.

For some reason I wish it was a part of me. Or may'be its just because I'm wishing he was a part of me. Or may'be it feels like he is. He opens the left eye and now he's staring at me directly. His face seemingly asymmetrical because one iris is red and the other brown.

I stare between the two sides of his face. His expression is enchanting. Filled with so much tenderness. I can see straight through him. Be lost in his eyes. Let that gentle gaze bathe me. I feel the heat starting in the base of my stomach when he leans down and kisses me lightly. And when he pulls away the feel of his soft lips lingering, I know that I have to have him.

I reach for the blanket separating me bare as Eve from him my bare skinned Adam. Kakashi watches me with a slight smile that's just short of triumphant as I slowly move the blanket down. He stares straight at me. Right through me. He's watching my hands, watching my face. And I want him to see what I want in my eyes.

He watches me throw the blanket off. The book closed and forgotten falling to the floor. And I can visibly see that he wants it. But when I reach to take him in my hands, he takes my fingers and gently pushes them elsewhere.

I frown. He smiles.

"I have to go to work." He says.

'You're always late for work." I remind him.

"I know…." He begins. "but I have to.." Suddenly, I remember. And I cut him off.

"I get it." I snap. Sharper than necessary may' be, but he doesn't react. And I don't expect him to. But it still makes me angry. I scoot away from him and turn my face to the wall. Studying the big plastic cat shaped clock Asuma got me last whatever holiday he bothered with a gift.

I hate cats.

I sniff. I don't want to cry. But right now…

Kakashi leans over me. His face burrows in my neck like a groundhog searching for refuge. I fold my arms. His voice has that raspy-ness that comes from just waking up. I smell me on his breath when he kisses my earlobe and says. "I'll make breakfast."

Asuma never makes breakfast.

I sit at my own kitchen table swinging my feet. It's weird having Kakashi in my kitchen. Standing at the stove, half dressed, nursing steam as it drifts upwards like kindred spirits from a serene frying pan.

The sizzling makes me happy. Takes me back to minor years living with Mom and Dad. And other strangers. And I can smell turkey bacon. Because that's the only bacon I have in my house. I wonder if he notices. I rest my chin on my hand and watch him.

Cooking seems beyond a man like Kakashi. So masculine. And passive- aggressive. But he's working two pans at once. Smoke, the ambience, the muscles in his thick forearms flexing slightly as he flips spatulas.

Feeling my eyes on him, Kakashi turns his head and smiles at me and says. "What are you looking at?" I spit my tongue out at him. He chuckles and I can't remember the last time I loved someone's smile so much.

Kakashi flicks off the stove. A final sputter of grease from the bacon bubbles up to greet his arm. He doesn't flinch. Just curses and rubs at the tender spot before flipping the breakfast onto a few plates and turning to face me.

And it makes me smile.

With somewhat of a flourish, he sits bacon, eggs, and a blueberry pancake down in front of me, says "Bon appetite." And kisses my forehead.

I think about what it would be like waking up to Kakashi every morning. And I wish I could freeze this moment forever in some tangible way. Like breakfast.

He's just having orange juice. Which he sips slowly, methodically. The way he does everything for the most part. And I smile. Knowing that I've exclusively seen beyond that stoic mask. Passion turns him into an animal.

The food is good. I eat hungrily. Forgetting myself, but Kakashi doesn't seem to mind. When I look up, he's staring at me with that tenderness again. I wonder what he's thinking when he looks at me like that. I reach out for him and he takes my hand. I loop my fingers around his wrist and feel his heart beating. Fast. I want to dance to that rhythm.

Time escapes us. The morning is almost gone. I almost want to forget about work. But I know I can't. And Kakashi can't either. He holds me tight when we shower together. Stroking my hair. Like he never wants to let go. And watches me intensely as I get dressed.

When we get out of the door I can't help but feel a sense of dread. Feeling him escaping me. Heading for the training field I hold onto his hand. Tightly, like nothing can pull me away. Even though I know better. I want to be with him. I need his love. I wonder what he feels. Miss his passion already.

And the more I think about it, the tighter I squeeze his hand. Its only slightly surprising that he squeezes back just as hard. We walk in silence. I try to match his footsteps. Hold onto the feeling of him being a part of me.

When his tiny little apartment comes into view he drops my hand. I feel my stomach sink down to my feet. Kakashi keeps walking, but I hang back. Watching his easy gait. His hands lost in his pockets. Already I'm feeling withdrawal. Already.

I wait until he goes up the steps and knocks casually on the door before I start walking again. Keeping it slow, casual. The apartment door opens. Anko's waiting for him. Wearing a bra and his boxers. I overhear him tell her it was an overnight mission again. Avert my eyes when he kisses her.

Pick up the pace.

But she notices me anyway. Looks over his shoulder and waves at me cheerfully.

"Hey there, Kurenai. Good morning." I think of Kakashi saying 'Hi', his fingers in mine. I swallow hard. Manage to raise my arm stiffly. Force my voice out. A hollow

"Hi."

Kakashi turns around, now. His arm is looped possessively around Anko's waist. She's so close to him she could be the vest he's wearing. Her fingers through the belt loops in his pants. Dangerously close to the place he had pushed me away from.

There's no tenderness in his eyes, now. Nothing. The left one is hidden by his forehead protector. The right is empty. Heavy lidded and empty. He says flatly in that bored tone he usually uses with everyone but me and her

"Good morning, Kurenai."

Good morning.

I force a smile, but don't feel it. Feel clumsy. Out of place. As empty as his stare. I taste blueberry pancakes in the back of my throat. I say like a robot programmed to just the right channel.

"Good morning, Kakashi."

He nods and I move even faster now. On towards the training field. Remembering his arms around me.

His soft lips.

Struggling to remind myself that in broad daylight to him

I'm just a passing stranger….

**And thats it guys. Hope you liked. If you haven't noticed, meaning if you haven't read any of my other fanfics, Kakashi is my favorite Naruto character, so most of the stories I post on the site will be about him. If you however would like to make a request, I'm all ears. . And also I am an avid supporter of KakaAnko. So that explains the Kakashi Anko bit...yeah so, I was originally planning to make this one longer. I just wanted to test it out first and see the response I get. If you'd like more chapters of this story please message me or review and say so or something. And lastly as for the future the next fic I publish will more than likely be a SasuSaku one. I just might do a KakaSaku too. If I get enough requests for it. Because that pairing disgusts me and it will take a lot of persuading. In the meantime happy floating in the fanfic world. Til we meet again. .**


	2. Dreamland

Dreamland

_**Face down in the dirt….**_

_**She says "This doesn't hurt"**_

_**She says……**_

_**Do you feel like a man?**_

When I was a little girl I used to have the same dream every night. I'd wake up in a fever pitch of sound and color. Fading noise and emotions colliding and coinciding in my head. Slowly dying, fading like the last refrains of a song; until I realized that I was awake and not still floating in dreamland.

The funny thing is I could never recall what the dream was about. Every night the same dream, though. I'd jerk awake and sit up in bed sweating, clutching at my bedcovers. Panting and scared. But I could never remember the dream. Only that it terrified me, and that it was the same dream every night.

Now I'm like that kind of.

Floating along down the village street. Shouldering past a man in a too big straw hat. Ducking to avoid the road rage of a roly-poly woman pushing a vendor's cart of flowers.

My body is on auto pilot. My feet just moving, without much thought. Steering me towards the destination I get up and walk to every morning. Only this morning I feel different.

I feel the breeze.

I feel like light, like a bird.

Like I can just spread my arms and take off. Like I'm walking through a dream world and all the faces I see are smiling. And everything is clean. Pristine. Nice.

I feel the sunshine. I feel like sunshine. The sky is so blue. It must have cleaned out it's eyes especially, just to look down on me today. I feel like humming. I feel like singing. I feel like biting my lip so an outburst of sunshine won't come spilling out of my mouth and gushing down my chin. I don't want to let it out. I need to keep it all for my self. It's mine.

I feel happy.

I feel Kakashi's lips on my skin. I feel his hands exploring me. As if searching for gold in my dirt. I feel his soft tongue in my mouth. Breathing into me. Making me want to be. To live. I feel like I can still feel his warmth all over me. Shielding me. Protecting me from Asuma. From everything I'm too afraid to admit needing protection from.

I taste him on my own tongue. Feel a tiny spark in the pit of my stomach. A little electricity that I grown accustomed to associating with him. Like a grove of fireflies suddenly bursting into light in the dark bowels of my intestine. I feel so many things all at once. I feel like a scribble. A moving frenzied blob of crazy lines and motion. Content to just float around. Head in the clouds.

Dreaming.

Dreaming.

Dreaming.

And it's funny. Because a few weeks ago I didn't even know Kakashi. He was just a distant co worker. We'd nod politely if we chanced to pass by each other or somehow come into vague contact.

I'd always found him a little strange. He reminded me of a snowman. Frosty. Cold. Distant. May' be it was the hair.

But then…there was that fight with Asuma a few weeks ago. A notion becoming more and more frequent. He's been snapping like an atom bomb lately. Kakashi had noticed me crying behind a tree on the training field and taken me to a local tavern.

He sat me down at the bar. After I told him my troubles he called Asuma every curse I had ever heard of and even some I hadn't. He sat a little too close to me and I can remember picking up his scent that first time. He always smelled good, masculine, spicy even. May' be like cinnamon. Iced over sticky buns spread out on the kitchen table the Summer I turned ten years old.

He listened to me talk about my small world. Told me crazy stories about his crazy childhood. Made me laugh. And no one had ever quite gotten me the way he did. That first night I saw something in him. Something a little sad. Or may' be a little wild. But definitely beautiful.

We'd had four, five, ten drinks too many. And then we had stumbled drunken, tripping over each other and laughing into my empty apartment.

And loved the troubles off of each other on the living room floor.

Afterwards he'd carried me to the bedroom, bumping into unfamiliar furniture, sometime during the night. And I woke up to him the next morning as if I did it every morning. And now I do.

And I thought that may' be I could….no. As it turned out there was Anko. His undercover bride, but…..no. I can't think about her now. Not while I'm holding on to Kakashi and feeling so good. I only want him. And those images. And that warmth. And that security.

Asuma will shatter me.

I was supposed to meet him yesterday night. But there was Kakashi. And when I was lost inside Kakashi my phone rang. I am almost certain it was Asuma calling. He called twice. Heavy, impatient trills. Shrieking. Warning. Then Kakashi had simply climbed off of me, wrenched the whole thing from the wall and climbed back on.

Thinking about that now I smile. I still feel may'be a little invincible.

But I'm going to be late for work if I don't hurry, though. I walk faster. Pump my arms and legs.

Today the village looks so colorful. I feel the breeze sting my skin. Remember fire and passion and heat of another kind. And I can't be stopped.

I'm smiling even as I reach the training field. Even as I see Asuma standing there. He's like a gladiator under the tree at the edge of the field where it all started. I've come full circle. Asuma's legs are slightly spread. Arms folded. Prepared to go off for battle. For me.

Cigarette, the love of his life hangs from his burly lips. He blows gray lazy loops like crop circles into the air. Staining the blue. The grey smoke color momentarily reminds me of Kakashi.

But only momentarily because Asuma's eyes are locked on me like homing missiles. His face is like darkness. His eyes so black. Tar colored quick sand. No light daring to creep close enough to his face to shed some gentility.

I feel my stomach drop down to my feet. Fear, unbridled and unwanted grabs the base of my spine and shakes me. I've never seen him so angry before. For a moment I want to turn around and walk back the way I came. But he's already spotted me. And I know somehow if I turn and run he'll come right after me.

For some reason this thought chills me to the bone.

My mind is racing my heart. Trying to see which one can explode first. And Asuma is just standing there. Planted like a statue. Rooted like a tree. His eyes are glued to me. He watches me carefully, never taking those quick sand pits away from my face. Smoking calmly. I can smell the tobacco, now.

He's watching me so closely I almost trip over nothing and fall. Blowing smoke. Billows become ribbons in the sky. Dark grey halos over his head.

I come face to face with Asuma and stop. And he just stands there staring at me. No one else has made it to the training field yet. I'm alone with him. And it's so quiet. Quiet as a cemetery. My heart is screaming. I can hear it jumping around in my chest. Looking for an escape route. I'm sure Asuma can hear it.

His eyes are so clear. On my face. Watching me like I might do something spectacular. Freezing me so that I can't. Can't move. Can't think. I can stare back. Lazy smoke clouds. The smell washes over me like a tobacco tidal wave. Thick plumes somehow make their way into my lungs. But I'm too afraid to cough. My eyes start watering. And I want him to say something so badly. Anything to fill the emptiness.

Asuma won't speak. I rub my arm. Tug down on my sleeve where I know a lip shaped hickey is hiding underneath. Right across my wrist. Just to keep myself from spontaneous combustion I say

"Asuma, I…."

"Shut-up"

His voice comes out sharp. A bark like that of a pit bull. Authoritative. Shocking me into silence. His stare hardens. His eyes normally brown are now so dark they look black as coal. So dark and angry. My mouth goes dry. I don't want to look at him. Can't look away.

Asuma says "Where were you last night?"

I blink. Realize I have no excuse. "I'm sorry." I say. Stammering to get it out. Trying to make sense of the words in my brain, now. Make sure it all comes out right.

My mouth is jelly, now.

My tongue feels like a rock, now.

Asuma is a snake, now.

His voice low, venomous, treacherous. Warning 'don't cross me'. Don't cross me….

He enunciates every word. "Where. Were. You?"

"Home." I say. I look at him. Look him in the eyes. It's partly true.

He doesn't seem to have heard. His expression hasn't changed. I don't think he heard me. But then he says. "I called you four times." Gritting his teeth. I feel so small. I say "I was asleep."

His face softens. He says "Oh." I relax. I sigh. It's okay. He's okay. Not mad. He doesn't know about me and Kakashi.

I smile at him a little. Relieved.

Asuma hits me.

Hard.

And fast.

So fast I can't block it. I don't see it coming. His fist connects with my eye. I think I fly. I see a halo of stars. Dancing lights behind my eye. I can't open it.

Asuma is standing over me. Towering down on me. Blocking out the sun. I can't move. I can't think. My brain hurts. My head hurts. I realize there are tears on my cheeks. My chest heaves. I'm crying. I can't open my eye. Asuma growls at me. Low. Guttural.

"Whenever I call you, you better pick up the phone. You hear me?!" he thunders. His voice sounds weird. My ears are ringing. I can't speak. I can't respond. He moves for me again. I reach up a weak hand to fend him off, but he grabs me by the hair and yanks me up so hard I can feel a fire spreading in my scalp. Feel it burn me up.

He pulls me into him and slams his fist into my stomach. All the air leaves my body in a whoosh. My knees buckle. I grab out for support. My hands clap his vest. He shoves me off. And I'm on my back in the grass.

I taste blood on my lips. Foul. Metallic.

I can't move. It hurts so bad. It hurts. I wish I had the strength. To fight him. To hit him back. Like I've hit countless foes. Numberless enemies. But I can't. I can't hit him. I can't. And it hurts so bad.

I feel myself lift up and out of me. Fading consciousness. In and out. Asuma's voice warped through the ringing in my ears. I can hear myself sobbing. I wish I could float up, now. Float out into that dreamland, now.

Safe.

Distant.

Warm.

Asuma says "Get-up!"

I can't.

"Kurenai, get up. "

I feel his hands on me again. I'm not strong enough to push him off. He grabs my wrists and pulls me to my feet. The darkness has left his eyes. They're brown again. His cigarette is gone, but I don't know where it went. I feel so hollow. It hurts. He puts his hands in his pockets. His voice sounds tired, now. His features look empty.

He says "The students are coming."

I don't argue. He's still holding my wrists. I can't let him expose me. Somehow in the twisting eye of this storm of pain I manage to tug my sleeve down farther. He says "Go get yourself cleaned up. " And pushes me towards the academy building.

On inertia I walk. Because I can't stop. Or I'll fall apart. Because I can't stop or the pain will swallow me up like a hungry bear. And I wish I was dreaming. I wish I was finally learning the details of that faint recurring dream. I wish I was

Floating.

And dreaming,

And floating.

And dreaming.

**I really enjoyed writing this piece. I'm trying to get into the details of the story line. Making the plot thicken. Yeah. malicious smile. For those of you who didn't get the clues Kakashi and Anko are married. And Kurenai and Asuma are not. .. Also special thanks to kushi13, ****19bLuEoRaNgE9, silver-eyed, and anyone else who reviewed this story asking for continuations. My memory is shaky so if I left anybody out don't hate me. Look for more coming soon! I'll be sure to post……when I post….muahahahaha.**


	3. Cinnamon Sticks and Grass Stalks

_**He kissed my lips  
I taste your mouth  
He pulled me in  
I was disgusted with myself**_

_**If you were the one who was spending the night…..**_

So, the cosmos is a scary thing when you think about it. When you are standing in a bathroom, face shifting like a distorted fish in the blunt mirror. When the eyes that look back at you are mismatched, because one of them is long lashed and almond shaped, and the other one is the size of a grapefruit, swollen until the lids seal tight to keep out unwanted visitors, then you realize the size of the universe. You began to realize the size of yourself. That actually you are indeed very small like a tiny single pinprick of ink in an Etch-a-Sketch. And the galaxies dwell around you and to engulf your unimportant existence, swallowing you whole. You begin to realize that as your own individual world rips and begins to unthread itself The World continues to spin nonchalant and jovial about you.

Also, if you are me then you realize that you have been hit awfully hard.

I study myself in the mirror, part my bangs and probe my eye with a fingernail. The skin is tough and resistant as if it's hiding something ballooned in the folds of itself. The former pink hue has been boiled and darkened to a roguish violet color, just about the exact shade of those grapes I used to love to buy from Tanzaku Town before Kakashi told me they were Anko's favorite,too. And before Asuma began demanding them.

Don't get me wrong, I've never claimed to love Asuma. But even though I've never said it out loud doesn't mean I wasn't ever thinking it. Wasn't ever keeping the notion polished and guarded like a locket around my heart. Of course I'm a very feeble and fragile creature. I've heard it ever since I was little. Ever since my delicate girl fists couldn't stack up to my brothers' taijutsu. And I've felt it in Kakashi's body. In the differences between my slightness and his sanctious build. Only in one case this fragility was a sign of comfort and in the other it was not. The point is, it's easy for a spineless heart to fall deeply into something that is a little like love. And more like a grave. Seeing as the more work you put into it, the deeper you dig until you feel the soil compounded on stupid things you shouldn't have said and even stupider risks you shouldn't have taken. And then the black is curling at your feet and riding up your chest, and by then it's too late.

Essentially what I'm saying is this is all my fault.

It's not like there were no signs. Contrary to the way most women put it, it doesn't happen overnight. Asuma didn't lay down to sleep beside me, hoarding me in his arms and then wake up a monster. No. There were little things. It crept along. And it wasn't as if eventually he was anyone different anyway. It was just that he was himself. He was finally and truly himself, and it's important to love someone unconditionally. It's important. That's what they always say. That's what they all say. That love is unconditional. That love is…I love…..him….I _love_ him.

I...

The bathroom door creaks open. Impossible. No one hangs out after training hours at the Academy building. Especially not to wander into the women's bathroom……

One of the best things about being a shinobi, however is that we can turn "impossible" into a split second of fluid motion so swiftly that you might blink and then can't bring yourself to believe it even really happened. So one moment I am there in front of the sink leaning into my distorted mirror face and the next minute I am _there_ crouched on all fours and making a desperate roll under the nearest stall door. I just manage to squeeze through, and end up banging my chest on the toilet base and become curled up around it like a pretzel. The pain seems to be attached to a frequency and reverberates through my whole body. I have to close my eyes and grit my teeth against the pain that scampers across my swollen eye. But it's only for an instant, and in the next instant I'm sucking my breath in and holding it captive behind my teeth.

The visitor makes a noisy way in. And it doesn't take me long to figure out there's more than one person. Their footsteps clap down haphazardly. I can determine that they're moving together. I can hear their breathing, gasping in, and gasping out uneven and pleading and desperate. There's a wanting. I know because I can hear the distinct sound of lips glued to foreign flesh, making tender sounds escape from the one, the woman. She mumbles something breathless, and the man chuckles. There's something familiar in his voice, but it's lost in the action. I can only imagine what they're doing. Through the long thin slice of open space under the stall door, I see their feet move past me, a crazy waltz passionado. A few seconds later, the woman laughs deep and throaty and some unidentifiable article of clothing falls to the floor. Well, this just has to be my lucky day.

Often times I sit and wonder, if it's all even worth it. If living through the clear sunny days is worth having to endure the dark spots like this one, and the pain. Because right now, I feel like I'm being stabbed into. My eye. Theres' another bolt of pain going dancing on it's bruised perimenter.

I could be sneaky about it, try to squirm out on my belly like a snake and get away unnoticed…. Their passion sounds are turning up, reaching somewhat of a fever pitch. I stand up and push the stall door open.

It's Anko and Kakashi.

Her back is pushed to the wall, and she's sitting on the sink, her curvy thighs balancing precariously. None of this matters however, because her skirt is pushed up around her waist and her thighs are full and fully visible and he is standing between them. His beautiful strong, lean body between her legs. One of her hands crawls like a spider up and down the length of his neck, and the other one is drowning in his hair, her fingers grabbing desperately.

Her head is back, her eyes are closed and her mouth is a smirking crescent moon, bow shaped lips parted in triumphant pleasure. I can't see his hands. And I can't see his face because he's bent over her, mouth at her throat.

And I break.

And the wind blowing through the air vents could pick up the pieces of my body and disperse me. Anko opens her eyes and says "Kaka." And I hate the way he looks at her when he listens. Hate the way she leaves her hand resting against the back of his neck, her mouth now tight closed, staring at me with stiff embarrassment and her cheeks flushed red. He turns his head and looks at me too, and if he wasn't so practiced his jaw would have dropped. Instead he simply stares. And so does she and so do I. Nobody says anything. I know they are both looking at my eye.

"Kurenai." Kakashi says at last. And usually when he speaks to me everything stops. And I can barely move, let alone breathe because there is nothing else only him. This doesn't work however when he's talking to me and touching her. I turn and leave. They keep watching me. I can feel their eyes on my back. But nobody calls out for me to stop, to wait, to stay. Then, I'm outside in the fresh air and how could I have been so stupid?

She calls him Kaka. When he looks at her, he feels her. It doesn't matter if he's even physically touching her, it's like he feels her all the same. He kisses her neck. He wants her. What am I to im? Just the other woman? When I did I become someone who could be labeled that way? Stupid.

My eye is starting to throb. The pain is really moving in now like how an epiphany can't be put into full effect until it's fully realized. Then it hits you hard. It hits me hard when I'm alone, walking circles in the Academy training field my arms locked around my middle trying to keep everything that's in there from coming out. It's no good.

I've never been one for a crisis. I don't know how to deal with them. They unnerve me so that I'm left loose and frantic like a headless chicken running around and trying to reassemble myself. Being alone has never been my forte. Even when I'm in between relationships....however right now at this moment, I can think only think of one place to go.

Asuma opens the door of his standard issue apartment before I knock, at odds with himself. On the one hand he is shirtless and broad and brown, taking up the entirety of the doorway; his chest crosshatched with brown hairs that lead a tumble weed trail down his midsection, dissecting him with perfect symmetry into two distinct halves. He always used to joke that I was his better one. His pants are bulky, left unbuttoned, the seams frayed and the pockets paint splattered like his toes: fat brown pigs, bare skinned and dotted with wet white paint. He's been painting which is normal.

On the other hand his eyes are red and puffy. His nose is runny and his beard is matted down while his hair is sticking up all around like a crown of thorns. And I know he's been laying down somewhere crying, and I notice that there's no cigarette anywhere visible on his person. Which is not normal. At all.

I know this is the way it goes every time. But still I feel a stab of guilt deep inside my belly twisting my stomach into knots. And still I hear that little voice in the back of my head saying 'you did this to him. It was you'

"Kurenai." says Asuma, and his voice breaks lingering on something he can't bear to express. _"Kurenai." Kakashi begs into my ear. And his voice is deep and rich and smooth and slides all over my body like silk. His voice is chocolate inside my head. _My eye is pounding. I want to cry now more than anything. I can feel the overwhelming urge pressing, a consistent heat against the orbs of my eyeballs. I step inside Asuma's house.

The atmosphere is all smoke. The place is one big huge ashtray. It's dark and cold. All of the shades drawn, all of the lights off, and a few lamps turned over on their sides. There's a broken wood chair lying like a sunken ship, broken piece of starboard jutting up against a wall, and a large hole in the plaster conceived by someone's fist and the wall climbing into bed together. Asuma's face seems to melt into the debris.

He reaches for me, then thinking better of it, he pulls back and balls his hands into fists at his sides. His eyes search my face repentant. _Kakashi's klaidescope eyes , and our faces pressed together. His lashes_ _so long and dark they brush my own like the feathery kiss of a snowflake, when he leans in just close enough to_

"I brought you something." Asuma almost whispers. "Wait right here." he says before turning and going away. As if I have anywhere else to go. As if there is somewhere I belong as confidently as Anko basked under the gentle nourishment of Kakashi's lips.....

There's something wrong with my brain.

There's something seriously wrong with me. I can't stop thinking about that man. About...._him_. About us. No.... Us= me + Asuma. Kakashi is an affair. Kakashi has a wife and they are quite obviously infinitely happy. Kakashi is over what must have been he and I. What must have been bone deep desire and blueberry pancakes. What must have been only just this morning, but seems a thousand light years away,now. Kakashi does not fit into the "us" equation.

I watch Asuma's broad back disappear from the room and become enveloped in the ambivalent smoke. It's so thick in here, that it's almost tangible. I turn my head to cough and the effort makes my eye scream. Asuma comes back smiling, and the effort makes his face splinter. In his large hands he holds a small stuffed cat.

I hate cats.

"I'm sorry." he says, holding it out to me. It hovers there, whiskers sticking straight out glass eyeballs glazed over like a gun between us, no ammunition. I take the doll, squeeze it in my hands and wish it's glass eyes could bug out, and wish it could gasp for breath, and wish that Asuma was not encircling his arms around my waist. And pulling me closer into his smoke smell so that I have to thread my hands together and link them robotically around his neck, and gaze into his face where his eyes are shining wet with desperation. Two ebony gems. Instead of one red and one ebony. I think I'm going to be sick.

I say "I know." I know. I know more than he knows. I know that this is how it's supposed to run. I know there's no other way. I know him well enough to want to dismember him. Nudging mine, his lips feel like sandpaper. Kakashi's lips were not like sandpaper. Kakashi's lips....Kakashi does not fit into the equation. I know this. I know it even as Asuma begins to undress me. And still every fiber in my body begs me to resist.

When it's over I can't sleep. The taste of his mouth was wrong. The touch of his hands were wrong. The make-up of his body was wrong. His voice in my ear sounded wrong. And afterward he rolled over and away from me, content to sleep himself on the on the opposite side of the bed.

Asuma goes through lots of phases. Photography with an old flashbulb apparatus he made himself. Carpentry with borrowed tools. Culinary tinkering with stolen goods. Now he paints. He's been painting again. I can see because the ceiling now is off white like an egg. And dripping thick goop as if it's been cracked. I rest on my back staring up, and trying to make sense of the shadows in all of that white. Asuma snores lightly. Outside of the bedroom window the sky is the color of a felt tip pen. The blue and opaque like a restless ocean or an uneventful midnight.

I hurt all over. Especially in my soul. Where pictures of _him_ and her are pinned permanently to the walls and they keep taunting me. I keep seeing _him_ standing there between her knees. I keep seeing the look on her face, a satisfied I've reached Nirvana look. I keep thinking about what she must have been feeling and what he must have been thinking and what they would have done if I hadn't popped out from under that stall. Not to say they didn't do it anyway after I left.

I remember every inch of his body so clearly. I almost say his name out loud. But I don't. It would cut like a knife. It would deepen the emptiness. Kakashi. This is withdrawal in the worst form. I cup my body into a C and hold myself around the middle. But still feel the imminent emptiness. Why did he...why did we....why can't I shake this?

Affairs come and go. They start and end. They are plants seeded in evil. Thou shall not covet thy neighbors house and all. They're hurtful. Especially when there's the risk of breaking a love involved. Especially when I love Ka...Asuma. Asuma. Asuma.

Ping! If I had been losing my grip on reality, I would have thought the little noise, the pinging!, was a rock or a pebble or something hitting my window. I roll over, shifting around in the bed. Try to get comfortable to rest my imaginative mind. Asuma's leg cuts a giant diagonal slice across the bed. Dividing it in half like a sandwich, which makes it difficult to get comfortable.

Ping! There it is again. Faint. But urgent. And there. Definitely there. I climb out of bed, swinging my feet, and haul myself to the window gathering my discarded nightgown around myself. I press my face to the window. Ping! I see it. The pebble. I see it hit. I see it fall. My heart skips a beat. I wrench the window up and the gust blowing around outside stings my eye, but it doesn't stop me from seeing.

After all, I have only to look down and there he is.

Kakashi stands, a lithe silhouette in the dark; one arm raised, a pebble pinched between two fingers ready for take off. When he sees me his face, glued into a blase expression softens and then breaks into a wide somewhat sheepish smile. I can see the imprint of those dimples through the thin fabric of his mask. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

"What are you doing here?" I hiss in a voice that leaps just short of hysterically down on top of his upturned head. He raises the pebble higher until it catches the moonlight. "Throwing rocks at your window." he says simply. "Why?!" I exclaim. Behind me Asuma groans like a bear and rolls over. Kakashi doesn't seem to notice. "Because," he shrugs. "I thought it'd be hopelessly romantic. And also a way easier on the ears than me strumming a guitar and singing Baby Come Back."

"Kakashi." I sigh. "_Baby come back! You can blame it all on me!_" he warbles. A few houses over a cat balanced precariously on a fence drops dead. "Okay. Shut-up."I say. "Is it because I forgot the guitar?" he smiles. I turn my head away from him, but not quick enough. I wonder if he can see me smile. I wonder if can see what he does to me inside. If he tries or if it just comes naturally. May'be it's me. May'be I'm off. And I need to end this now. To close the window and climb back into bed and end it all right here, right now.

But I can't.

"We need to talk." says Kakashi, and he's not smiling anymore. "I'll be right down." I say.

But when I get down to him talking is the last thing on my mind. Face to face he takes my breath away. And in the dark quiet of the moonlight, the soft ambience makes him look almost surreal. It takes every ounce of strength inside of me to control myself. To let him speak.

But his eyes look awfully sad. "What happened to your eye?" he asks. His arms are folded. I can feel the eye, throbbing now, no duller than when the other he first slammed his fist into my face. I bite my lip and Kakashi takes the faulty instant to move closer to me. He takes my hand in his warm, lightly calloused one and peers into my face. This will destroy me.

"Asuma." I say, bitterly because I can't keep it from him when his face is so close to mine. When his omniscience is penetrating me and pulling silent secrets out of my own battered gaze. I lower my eyes and Kakashi is silent. But when I look up at him, I realize that he's not just silent. He's gone. The face I see is not recognizable. The expression there doesn't belong to Kakashi. And it's strange because he's not angry. He doesn't look angry. His face...it's more like a total shutdown. His eyes are wide and empty. His mouth is lax. He stares at me like that. And it's almost....frightening. "Kakashi?" I whisper uncertainly.

"I'll kill him." says Kakashi, suddenly. And before I can make another motion, he's turned away from me and already started taking brisk steps towards the house. It takes a minute for me to register what's going on. Then it hits me, and I'm scrambling after him.

"No!" I exclaim, and I grab his arm and pull, but he keeps walking as if I'm not even there, almost dragging me along behind him. "Shhh, don't wake the neighbors." he says to the darkness in front of him, not even turning around to look at me. "Kakashi please stop." I say. He goes up the porch steps. I pull his arm harder, but he's like a ton of bricks.

"Kakashi!" I exclaim hysterical. "I'm going to break every bone in his body." he says flatly, reaching for the door knob. In a last burst of desperate energy, I throw myself in front of him, pressing my body against the door, arms outstretched prepared to be crucified.

"Kakashi, stop!" I beg him, my voice trembles and he balls his hands into fists. Now, I see the fury in his eyes. "Why?" he almst shouts, his gaze blazing into mine. Because I don't love Asuma anymore than I can live without you, now. Because you're satisfied with Anko and this is supposed to be happening to me for being greedy and disrupting the flow of things. "Because she calls you Kaka." I say and my voice cracks.

He kisses me. And it takes the breath out of me. And it's right. And it's sweet. And it's perfect. His lips are soft and melt against mine like butter. His body melts against mine as if we are two pieces in a puzzle finally finding one another. His scent overwhelms me, a strong spicy cinnamon, wraps around me like a comfort blanket.

We lie down in the grass. And I know it's absurd, but I can't let him get away. Because really right now, I need him more than I want him. And it's scary that really, the only time I ever feel wholly complete as a person is when I'm with him. When our bodies are connecting like this.

He takes me to Heaven and back. We ride on constellations, my nails digging into his back so that I don't fall off. We transcend planes and it becomes a sacred thing. The night is the only thing that shields us. And we rocket back down to earth, I wipe the sweat from his forehead gingerly with my hand and he drops a kiss on my forehead, And it would feel like surgical excision of an organ for him to leave me now, but the dark is fading around the edges like an old photograph, and the sun might soon burst through it's filaments.

I want to tell him that I love him. Instead we get dressed, and he goes giving me a wistful smile because the moment can't be broken with words. We both feel this. My skin feels alive and dancing, and I think I can see an electric current sparkling off of him as he lopes off into the remaining black, head bowed, hands in pockets. I love him. I'm sure.

When I get back into the bedroom Asuma is sitting bolt upright, rubbing his face, eyes squinting as if looking for human shapes in the darkness. "Asuma..." I say. "Where were you?" he asks, and his voice is thick with sleep so the lie comes easy. "In the bathroom." He nods and sinks back down beneath the crumpled covers. "Come back to bed." says the single tuft of hair protruding above the covers. I nod, swallow hard and pad over to him, peels the covers back and slide under. He moves towards me, almost instantly roping his arms around my body from behind. But it doesn't bother me as much as it would have been before or if I had not still been holding on to the memory and trembling over someone else's passion. Asuma burrows his face in my neck, and inhales, then stiffens. "You smell like cinnamon." I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep.

**Where there you have it guys.....long time coming, eh? I truly apologize for that. But I recently hopped back onto the literary band wagon on account of scorpiowarrior. Lots of love to you, homie, lol. *says in deep theatrical voice* Next time on passing strangers....sorry, just always wanted to say something like that.**


	4. Kakashi

**Kakashi**

**_I'm so sorry darling...  
Did I do the wrong thing?  
Oh what was I thinking?  
Wake-up call.........._**

I remember when I first found out what dickhead meant. It was just a few years back or really a long time ago what does it matter to me? I have no concept of time. All I know is that it was back when I was kissing boys to see if I liked the taste of myself. It was when back when I was taking soldier pills for every instant that I got because ANBU was not killing me fast enough. There is alcohol now. But once when I was with this guy who I didn't like who smelled like rusty wheels and had lips that cracked I pushed him away because I was becoming a womanizer on the low. And he shoved me into a plate glass window and called me a dickhead. I said oh man and laughed so hard that I started to gasp for air because it was the funniest thing conceivable to call somebody really. Especially coming from somebody you could have found the potential to love if you can look at you in somebody else who has your same parts and your same thoughts and fall in love which I can't. That night I laughed the whole night even though everybody stared the at me while I picked plate glass from my palms and bled. They say you have to laugh to keep from crying. But I wouldn't know.

The last person I ever loved really hard I killed with my bare hands. It was a combat partner in the SPECIAL OPS. who couldn't walk anymore because It got injured in battle and couldn't make the rest of the mission last with out slowing us down. So I cracked Its neck because I loved It and what It had been trying to accomplish because it's what we all had been trying to accomplish. They buried It with the dog tags. I don't remember if It was a man or a woman. Sometimes I think that might happen with me or kurenai. But I don't know if I'd have the balls. I don't know if I love her. I don't know much of anything. If you haven't noticed I'm stupid.

Anko is asymmetrical. One of her ears is bigger than the other one. One of her shoulders droops lower than the other one. One of her eyes is large and red and scarred. It's too much sake. It's the sake in my hand the glass is frosted. The glass is going up to my mouth until she takes it out of my hand and says give me that and sits down at the bar beside me on the stool that swings and starts running her mouth so the bar tender can look at us and oh man I don't even know what she 's saying. Kakashi are you listening to me? She says. You need to stop this. She says. This. She says. She waves the glass and shakes it and tinkle and it drops frost like seminal fluid on her hand and I'm guilty I'm freaking guilty because all I can see is me and kurenai making love in me and anko's space and anko is not there. Anko is somewhere else somewhere it doesn't take making love to realize you're not so good at taking care of somebody at the relationship thing and may'be we should just spend some time apart. I need to get a drink. I need to get my drink back. I reach for it anko pulls it away. The door behind us cuts the bar open and someone comes in and blow me over with a feather it's kurenai is walking in with asuma and jiraiya and tsunade an jonin into the bar but she looks at me only me. She smiles at me with her eyes something in my stomach curdles up my feet start to tap. Something happens when she looks at me only me. You've done enough of this okay? For tonight you're done. Says anko. Anko is still talking about the sake. Kurenai is sitting down kurenai's back is towards me kurenai's in a booth with that mother freaker that pig woman hitting mother freaker. I will kindly rip him limb from limb. Where are you going? Asks anko. I realize I am standing up. Kurenai looks over her shoulder between me and him who is order something from the menu I sit down. I cross my ankles uncross my ankles.

I reach for that drink. Anko covers my hands with her hands and I cannot get the drink. Her hands feel small and delicate her hands are cold. My hands tremble underneath her hands. This life is not killing me fast enough she leans into my face. She says honey are you okay? One of her eyes slides down towards her cheek her teeth look like jack o lantern cut outs. I will need more alcohol for this I will need more alcohol to balance this out I will need more functional brain cells I will be needing to get out of this body. I have got to get out of this one. Sometimes I have nightmares . In the nightmares I am pregnant there is a war growing in my stomach. When it comes to full term it rips out of me I bleed all over the place. The pain is unlike anything I ever experience. When I look at the baby I see it has several dismembered bodies all connected into one and several bloody faces all connected into one. Sometimes the features I make out belong to obito sometimes to rin my father anko kurenai sometimes the features I make out belong to me. Sometimes I wake up screaming at the top of my lungs sometimes its crying I wake up clawing at my belly at the nail marks left behind which are red and inflamed. Either way anko always pins my arms down at my sides caresses my hair and kisses my face and tells me I am going to be alright until I am silent. I wonder if kurenai would do this if kurenai would even want me anymore if she knew I was like this. I need to get to kurenai out. Who stands up and slides out of the booth heads somewhere that I cannot see is I stand up too and before anko asks To the bathroom I say.

I go outside the back and stare up at the sky. My back is to the brick. I am sipping the sake. I keep it in a vial in the vest pocket. I'm hoping that kurenai got the message and then hot dog there she is ducking out of the building with that expectant look on her face coming towards me like she is going to let me take her like I took her in the grass. I touch her face carefully because touching her does something to me inside her skin feels like heather. Her eyes are like waterfalls am I serious I will drown in them. I'm so determined to hear her say I love you when we get naked so I can keep it in my head and think about it. The last person I ever loved really hard I killed with my bare hands. She slides her hands up underneath my shirt she types her nails across my chest she makes me shiver. You came she says. That's what she said I say. Lets say we'll put our mouths together and see what comes out of it. Lets say her hands do crazy things to my body lets say she does crazy things to my head. My lips would like to live on hers. She laughs but it's breathless. Some crunching footsteps behind us. What was that she asks. Her eyes are alert her hands are somewhere I like them being lets keep going.

"And right over here is my secret make out spot." says someone else. Someone else is Jiraiya. He pokes his head around the corner. He is with a girl. She is short and brown. She has big brown breasts stuffed into a tiny shirt. She is freaking hot. She is not tsunade. Jiraiya looks at me and I look at him and he looks at kurenai who should be anko but is not anko. Because anko is somewhere else where it doesn't take making love to realize you're not so good at taking care of someone in a relationship. T he girl with the big brown boobs is silent. She is uncertain kurenai pushes against my body with her hands. She is willing us to separate too late she is frozen stiff. She is half undressed. Her heart beats very fast against mine in her chest. Oh says Jiraiya. Oh I say.

**Okie dokie so there you have it! Updated with Kakashi's voice. If it sounded totally different from the rest of the story that is great! Because I was trying to give Kakashi his own voice and he just happened to be hopelessly drunk during this section(which will thicken the plot later muaahahaha) but I was trying to get him to sound totally different from kurenai, did it work?! So yes Kakashi and Kurenai have been caught by Jiraiya. What will happen next that's for me to know and for you to find out…..but not right now. That will be next chapter! So stay tuned and review as always!**


	5. To Be or Not To Be

To Be or Not to Be

_**Let me know that I've done wrong**_

_**When I've known this all along**_

_**You're the only one that needs to know**_

_**Don't tell anyone or you'll just be another regret.....**_

Kakashi spends the next almost an hour threatening the LEGENDARY SANNIN JIRAIYA. Demanding almost, in the quiet brooding manner that a man like Kakashi can only demand, that the old man keep his mouth closed on what he saw. On us, me pressed against the wall groping to connect our heartbeats with my hands, and Kakashi's driven finger tips, tracing tender routes and pit stops along the parts of me that long for parts of him on a daily basis.

I can't get close enough to make out what they're saying. And I hang back reluctant willing to just be there and not be snapped up in the chaos. I stand there listless, my thoughts drumming restless beats against my skull bones; my arms wrapped around my middle as if I've somehow gotten better at holding my body in, in one complete mass of flesh over the past couple of minutes.

Jiraiya and Kakashi talk, their heads bowed like two old men over checkers. They squat down in the dirt, relaxed. Kakashi slumps back on his elbows and stretches out his long legs. There's the pretense of laziness billowing overhead like a weed cloud, but I can hear the darkness in their voices. The bitter stabs of periods, the sarcastic turns of commas, and the jagged way their sentences joust against one anothers like a skeleton struggling to fight it's way out of it's skin. I wonder what's going to happen. What's going to happen to me?

The girl Jiraiya brought with him stands beside him, staring down at the two of them, but when I look her eyes are suddenly on me. I smell her sweet in the air. Can tell by the wrinkle in her nose that she is smelling me too. And for a moment we stand there eyeing each other, the hairs on the back of our necks rising up like the hackles of two jungle cats circling one another for territory, all smooth black bodies and solid muscle. When she looks away from me she looks back into Kakashi's face, enraptured. And in my mind's eye I can see what she sees. The planes of his eyes, and the smooth angles of his bones and the gentle pink curves of his lips, and the definitive chin. She looks back up at me and the kitten in her eyes is ferocious and knowing when she licks her lips. Despite myself I feel a sting of jealousy scrape down my back like an idle claw. And almost as a reflex I step forward and link my arm in Kakashi's as the two men stand and move away from each other. She is too pretty.

Without another word, Jiraiya turns to go. Whatever needs to be said has been said. Questions hang in the air for me to ask, but I'm too afraid to grab them and rein them in, now. May'be later when there's not this stilled vortex of chaos swirling around me. May'be later when I find my head under the sink in Asuma's apartment or somewhere else where it is easy to think. To think about what might...

As they go, Jiraiya holding tight to the girls' brown arm, she looks back and her eyes filter me out and run straight for Kakashi. I want him to kiss me right then and there. Right on the open mouth. In front of her darling face. And her darling lips. And her darling breasts that are coming out of their places in her shirt. But he won't. He won't do anything, he's too busy watching them leave. And I can't read his expression which as I'm learning is never good.

When they've finally completely gone, Kakashi turns and walks past me, brows knit like a storm cloud over his features. He sits down in the gravel and rests his hands underneath his temples. The air grows thick with silence between us, and a breeze blows through picking up debris and my heart rate along with it. I just might explode.

Kakashi lifts his head and swears, his head back, swaying a little. His eyes look blank and far away in the spaces where sake red has not filled them in. As if he is searching for something in the crevices of the sky. Something breathy and tangible. He swears again and this time bangs his fist on the wall behind him. I think I hear something dull. A popping or crunching sound. And in the instant that he takes his hand away from the brick I see his knuckles alive with blood.

"Kakashi!"I shout, unable to hide my emotion. I get to him just as he's raising his fist again and pry his hand to my chest, where the stubborn fingers remain a fist like an iron necklace between my breasts. His skin is sticky and wet with blood. And the blood is so red and so sticky on my own skin that it might not be blood at all. It might be candy or something else. Less sinister. If this was not our reality.

His hands shake in mine. I can visibly see the cracks sliding up through his body threatening to demolish him into a pile of useless bone and splinter. Even when he smiles just a little and says "Sorry, I got a little ahead of myself there." Even when I smell the sake on the flak of his jacket and wonder if he even drank before We got going. Before this.

"It's okay." I say. And I thread my fingers in his hair, because I can feel us both unraveling. He wraps his arms around me to hold us both together and we sit. Listening to each other's heartbeat making sure that the other is alive and well. For now. Because "Anko." Kakashi murmurs into my shirt. And Asuma, I think. What would Asuma do if he knew? Would he kill me?

"Anko." Kakashi keeps saying. His eyes are taking on that far away look again. And I can tell that I will lose him to the ghosts of deaths yet to come if I don't say something now. So I force the words to speak even though my mouths feels hollow and empty. "It's okay, baby." And the words come out before I even know what I'm saying. His eyes lock on mine. And we have entered into something new and unfamiliar here. Something dangerous with that word. Baby.

And yet it seems like it was made for now. For this exact moment, and for him and him only. And whatever the word even means really I wouldn't have meant it as much if I had said it to anyone else. Kakashi watches my face and the way this new thing has changed it, I suppose. His lips move and he mouths the word himself, tasting the ebb and flow of it. Then he reaches for my neck and pulls me down, smiling into his lips pressed into an identical shape and pressing them against mine. And I might have believed in the magic of it all.

Except the next day we both get called into Lady Tsunade's office.

**Hehehe, so there you have it. Fooled you didn't I? This chapter was nothing but a little twitter to transition back into Kurenai's POV and to build the suspense UP UP UP! So what's gonna happen next folks any guesses? Has Jiraiya informed the Hokage? Will Kakashi retaliate? Have Asuma and Anko found out? What will they do? WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT?! Wellllll, you'll just have to find out in the next chapter. ^.^**


	6. Verdict

**Verdict**

_**Justify, your secrecies that surmise your cries  
I see the way you look around the bend  
is it going to end, when?  
**_

_**When you change your mind is it going to end?**_

Kakashi is wrapped in cellophane bags of skin that just barely hold him together. And here in front of the dragon breather herself, the flame spitter, Lady Tsunade, he is falling apart. I know that he drinks. I know this, but somehow the specimen I'm focusing on beneath this harsh new microscope is clearer. Different. New. This is different. This red eyed, dry lipped creature, hands folded in front of himself the way a scalded dog tucks his tail between his legs is someone I have never seen before. He's silent as if trying to make it seem like he's being natural. The really scary thing is that the harder I look at him, the closer I get, noting the lines beginning to clearly carve out his face; bitter premature hooks digging into his flesh, the clearer it becomes to me that this is how he always is. In fact if it wasn't for the thick sticky sweet smell of a too early morning sake wafting off of his every breath, you'd think he was just being quiet and humble and docile. Perhaps on the verge of a witty click of the tongue if time allows or if those bedroom eyes saw fit. You would think he's just being himself.

Well, may'be he is.

Tsunade's pacing around her desk is the only thing that keeps me from thinking too hard for too long. Her forehead is creased , the pure yellow ripples in those almost hazel eyes shine like golden bullets in direct sunlight filtered through the blinds dressing her window. She doesn't say anything to anybody just keeps pacing, while somewhere somebody's got a fan going that churns and whirs a steady rhythm.

Next to me Kakashi has a bead of sweat sliding down his face near the corner of his eye, and through the fabric of his mask I can see him biting his lip. Which would otherwise have been a very stimulating sight if we were not right here right now.

And someone might have force fed me my heart for breakfast this morning, because it feels like it has come up in my throat and is sliding against the empty expanse at the back of my mouth, threatening to spill out balanced on my tongue as if presented on a fleshy pink platter. A hot rush of furious bile washes up against my teeth and I lurch forward, but will myself not to vomit.

Kakashi's eyes slide towards me and I realize there's more moisture scaling his high cheekbones, but now I'm not sure if it's sweat. Or.... "Hello."

The door behind us opens up and Asuma says this when he comes in.

Time has stopped. He's here. He's actually here, he knows. I have stopped. Existence seems a futile beating of broken wings tangled in the barbs of Asuma's steady gaze as he lumbers towards us. I'm going to be sick, I have to throw up. I....I'm going to die.

Asuma licks his chapped lips, which is just an old habit of his. He stands almost next to Kakashi, who balls his hands into deft fists at his side. I reach out and touch his curled fingers gently, but they are hot as iron rods sterilized over a flame. And Asuma is looking at us, so I let go.

Tsunade clears her throat. "Well, so nice to have all of you here today." she says, and finally stops pacing, putting her hands down on her desk and facing us with the ghost of a smile riding her lips. "Nice to be here, Miss Hokage." says Asuma. I can't move myself to say anything. Kakashi is staring a side long glance at Asuma's throat like he could slice clean through the meat and bone with his eyes. There's that nauseated feeling again. I swoon.

And Asuma looks up at Kakashi as if charged by the stare. For a second I lose all of the breath in my body and the two men stare at each other. Then after what seems like years, oddly Kakashi breaks into the faintest of smiles. His eyes crinkle into crescents and then he looks away. Asuma keeps on staring.

"Order in the court." Tsunade snarls even though nobody other than Asuma has said anything yet, and nobody has done anything yet. I feel like I should slide between them land make a sandwich pushing them farther apart, but then Tsunade keeps on talking, saying "I bet you all want to know why I've called you here with this ungodly spontaneity." And my lungs get smaller and smaller in my chest. I can feel the color draining from my face in torrents like the shells of hard candies that have been left out in the rain to be reduced to their bone white skeletons and runny chocolate centers.

I can feel Kakashi's eyes pressing my cheek, but I don't dare look at him. The fingers on one of his hands twitches and I know without having to inquire that he's resisting that unknown force between us that pushes us to reach out for one another. There's a sort of hollow comfort that settles like a fine dust in the pit of my stomach. But then Tsunade opens her mouth again and blows it all away.

She says "There's a mission."

I wait for the world to curl against itself and bowl over. I wait for the sky to fall, and the building to shake, and the windows to break it all in to collapse-able rubble that will bury our bones. I wait for Asuma to turn to me snarling teeth carved out for blood, blood red eyes of fury pinned to Kakashi's face. I wait for them to curse and fight. I wait to die. I wait. And then realize.

"A what?! A mission?!" I squeak.

Tsunade stops whatever sentence she had been saying and turns to me mouth half open over the next letter. A brief streak of irriation lights up her face. "Yes, Kurenai. A mission. You know? Those things shinobi go on?" she quips, her eyebrows shooting up towards the creases in her hair line like bullets pressed into upside down V's.

I nod quickly and she's staring at me like I've lost it. But it's not enough to be embarrassed. It's relief. Hot, sweet, pure relief that floods over me. And suddenly I'm floating upstream. I'm high finding constellations again. I fold my arms around myself to keep from touching Kakashi and pulling him in to me and gluing our good fortune to his skin with my lips.

I look over at him, but he's practiced. And the bored look hangs from his face, a carefully polished second mask. Now that I think about it when it really counts, I've never seen a slip of that mask. When I look at Kakashi it's Asuma's eyes that stare back at me over Kakashi's shoulder, cool brown and knowing nothing. I smile at him, a genuine grin that creeps up and unfolds like the arm petals of an opening flower. Instead of smiling back he looks surprised.

Tsunade keeps talking, but I can't get my brain to listen to a word she says. My ears keep ringing with the unspoken words: free, blameless. And even now my body tingles with the thought of Kakashi's waiting somewhere to take me in the dim future. I get to share in that again, and almost instantly I feel the fires of the familiar insatiable hunger pushing against my ribs. And I can put past me Kakashi's red rimmed eyes and the bone deep smell of sake because he'd been only worried. But now there's no need for that. Now there's only the effort we need to produce this...to keep this...this beautiful evil a secret. Beautiful evil. So beautiful he's

"Kurenai, is that clear?" asks Tsunade. I snap back, can practically hear my thoughts crunch against each other like the fierce recoil on an elastic rubberband. Suddenly the present comes spinning back into focus, and the room comes to me, and the floorboards beneath my feet, and the bodies next to mine. And I'm grounded and suddenly staring face to face with Tsunade and the expectant twitch at the corner of her mouth.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" I ask. Tsunade sighs and her eyelids slide closed and stick. She pinches the frown lines that peek their heads above the bridge of her nose, and holds out her hand. From somewhere I had never noticed before, the black haired assistant appears harboring the fat bellied pig to her body and reluctantly puts a glass of some clear strong smelling liquid in the Hokage's ready grasp.

"Thank you, Shizune." Tsunade murmurs. "That's the fourth one today, and it's only just past noon." comes the reply, which Tsunade snatches and drops into the glass that she tilts to her mouth, throwing it all down her throat to swallow it whole. When she resurfaces she sighs, and the red cracks appearing in her eyes speak for her when she says "I'll say it again one last time. Kurenai, this mission was originally designed for Asuma, Kakashi, and Anko. But it seems that Anko's been really sick as of late. So I thought to get a replacement: you. I feel that you're more than capable, but I can't allow you to forget how important it is that you do your best. I don't expect you all to head out for another month or so however, considering the situation so that should give you plenty of time to get prepared. You can't screw this up, understood?"

Anko, sick? But that's impossible.....I make the mistake of looking at Kakashi, but he doesn't react to this either. Couldn't be true though. I just saw them a couple of days ago in the bathroom. Just saw them k.....never mind. "Understood." I say. "Good." Lady Tsunade exclaims exasperated. She turns her back on us then, and waves us off. "That's all for now. Get out of my office."

She couldn't make me stay.

But outside Asuma corners me. Kakashi hangs back and Asuma bombards me with his arms tight around my waist. He leans into me, his face close to mine and I almost feel guilty when he smiles. "What was with that smile in there? Happy to see me?" he asks me teasingly. "Yes...something like that." I manage to choke out. And there's a split second before our lips meet that I steal a glance at Kakashi. And see the fury. In his eyes. In his hands. In his face. All over his body. Permeating thick through the air surrounding him even, so that if I got too close I'd choke on it.

I want to pull away from Asuma. My muscles tense and I almost do it, but then his lips crash into mine. I close my eyes tight and his mouth moves over mine. And when I feel his lips parting more, inviting and his grip sliding lower I pull away mumble something about shyness and PDA and pat his shoulder; which feels awkward, but right now I just need to. Because I feel dirty. Like pill bugs are crawling beneath my skin,burrowing down deep and getting comfortable. "Ka......Asuma. Later okay, baby?"

"Much later." Asuma says. And he winks, and I smile hoping he doesn't see the repulsion forming cracks at the corners of my eyes and my smile. He looks back Kakashi some nonverbal salute, then he turns and walks away. And I walk over to Kakashi and watch him watching Asuma. "Are you okay?" asks Kakashi, his eyes still glued to Asuma's retreating back. "Yes." I say. I take his hand and kiss his fingertips and when he looks down at me and smiles, I feel like myself. I feel the natural order and the natural balance of things clicking back into place. And the picture is whole and complete once again. "What would I do without you?" I say to myself down to his long lovely fingers.

"I think we shouldn't see each other, anymore."says Kakashi.........................

"WHAT?!" The word comes out and the question mark behind it is the only thing that's holding me up and keeping me from splintering down the middle, because may'be there's an answer. Kakashi takes my hands and looks directly into my face. And his facial expression is carefully put together. And his mouth glides easily over the rehearsed words. But his fingers are gripping mine so tightly that my knuckles are burned white and through it all his hands shake.

"At least not for a while, Kurenai. Think about it. Jiraiya caught us. He knows and he's close to Tsunade. Of course we've got something on him too, but which of us do you think Lady Tsunade is more apt to believe. We need to lay low. Think about Asuma." he says, when he's really saying think about Anko. I love her and what will she do if she finds out? Especially now that she's sick.

And my mouth moves, but no sound comes out. All I can do is stare into his face, and in his eyes hoping there's some kind of pain there that mirrors my own. But there's nothing there. At least not in his face. His hands keep shaking. "I'm not saying goodbye. That's not what this is. Because Kurenai, right now I....want you....I..." he pauses and the mask slips. And the face behind it is uncertain and pained like a kid's. Like a little boy.

"I need you. Do...you...do you need me too?"

"Yes, yes. I need you." I say. I nod furiously. "I need you." I touch his face. His cheeks. His lips. Just to feel his skin. To prove to myself that he is real. That this has all been real, because if what he' saying is true then the last few months of my life, the best few months of my life, will virtually disappear. They'll turn their backs and go off and sit down in the empty room where all of the memories go, live and laugh and exchange stories, but they'll cease to mean anything to me.

Then it hits me. I love him. I want to say it. I love you. I love you. I want to say it. But if I do, what will happen? If I say it to him and his perfect face, and his perfect body, and his beautiful mind and soul and that smile. That smile....

"Kakashi." I beg. "One month." says Kakashi. "One month. We lie low for the one month it takes you to prepare to for the mission. Do you think you could? As soon as the mission starts." "We can be together agin." I say. "Yes." says Kakashi uncertainly. Then he nods and says it firmly again. "Yes. Do you think you could?" I don't really have a choice do I? Because then the cloth mask goes down. Then, he kisses me with a passion that sends me up in flames.

And I taste the hunger on his tongue. And I can hear the desire in his heart beat racing mine. And his arms hug me so tightly for so long, his hands stroking my hair, so that if I close my eyes and give myself up to it I think we might have something a little more than lust here. Love. Or something like it. Or at least may'be we will in a month's time or so. If I can survive that long without him.

**There you have it. Unexpected twist, I hope??? A little seperation and AH! a mission coming up. So expect some action hehehe, among other things. ^.^ **


	7. Kakashi: Sober

**Sober**

_**I'm safe up high, no one can touch me**_

_**but how do I feel this good sober?**_

_**Coming down coming down coming down**_

_**I'm looking for myself....**_

Sober. The hardest thing about being Sober is the pain. Ugh.....

I know that I want to be the hero. But the alcohol is way more appealing. Ow.

The alcohol produces numbness.

The alcohol takes me to places that are safe and hollow.

These places are outside of myself.....ugh....

These places are outside of my reach. That is mainly why they are safe. In the back of my mind ow I know the things I do are wrong. In my body there is only the thirst. Ow.

They say the flesh is weak. But I wouldn't know.

Unless you are considering the flesh of a man. And the flesh of a woman. And how they cleave together..... And how they seem to.....fit perfectly.

Don't think that I am ridiculous or disgusting because It is all I think about. Because It is all I seem to think about. Besides other things like fighting. Besides other things like being a shinobi.

These are simple human needs. The....ow simple human needs we thought that we flushed out with Evolution. The primal desires for violence and sex. Well, as far as I have researched myself I am only good at two things in this world. Being a shinobi and making love.

But it is funny that we should refer to it as that. Ugh...

Making love. When really sex usually has nothing to do with that. With love. Sex is just thrusting and kissing and organs and body heat. And saying words you won't mean later. And someone once said to me that "love comes from someplace warm and distant amidst the glaciers of your body", but I don't know. That has always sounded a little poetic to me. And nothing is as beautiful in real life.

Her face however strikes...ow...me as a very illustrious poem. Whenever I see it, her face is...she is beautiful. Her eyes. Her lips. Her skin. When I am telling her something I want to be holding her in my arms. I want her to be naked. But it is not because I want what she has. It is not because I want to take her. It's because I want to give her something. I don't know what it is. But I feel like I want to give her something.

I had to pull back. Ugh....

To separate myself. If I am getting in too deep, it can only end badly. If I am feeling like I will die now without her already, then there is a definite need for time apart.

Could it be love?

I almost want to say it. When I am inside of her sometimes. Not when I am joining with her body. But when I am connecting with her mind. When she's talking to me and laughing. When our thoughts are on the same channel. When she's smiling and her smile opens her up like a book so I get inside and our souls reach out and touch fingertips.

Then.

Then I want to say it to her. But I never do. If I ever did say it, I'd want it to be when I am holding her hand. I'd whisper it directly in her ear. I'd mean it. Wouldn't I?

Wouldn't I? Ow.....

Anko.

It's different with Anko. It's like we touch and I feel nothing, now. We talk and get nothing said, now. We stare into each other's eyes and it's like looking into something empty, now. Now, now. It couldn't have always been like this. It couldn't have been.....ugh.....

But Anko is always there. Here. Here she is now. I toss and turn in bed. With this....ow...hangover. The sun comes up and I have this hangover.

Sunlight is not nice to my hang over.....ugh......

My arms and legs are bare. Are sticky with sweat. I pull the covers up over my ugh head. Hide in the cool dark. My head pulsates. Somebody unscrew it and take it off of me, please. And there is Anko. Sitting in that chair at the foot of my bed.

Her feet are propped up. She is reading. She is ow leaning forward. Her skin looks like white diamonds. It's the sun. She's resting her chin on her hand. In her face I see plains and continents. Islands and grooves. I see them all. Because a woman is her own universe someone said to me before they died. Before...ouch...

Someone is always saying something.

Anko is saying something to herself. Humming. Humming in that low voice she uses when she is alone and keeping herself company. Except I am right here. I am always right here.

I turn over so that she doesn't have to see me if she is so determined not to. So that I don't have to feel guilty watching her read words she wishes that she could keep. Words about 45 ryu eye creamers in silver bullet capsules boasting of crushed ruby and mother of pearl. And 5 ryu fish sales at some sea store in Tanzaku Town.

Watching her where she taps her nails against the words there. And hums the words that she wishes I would say. If I knew how. She hums. And I turn over completely on my stomach. Take the words in my mouth and hum them back. Through my face and into the pillow. My breath stings my face. My breath smells like Kurenai. Anko flips a page. Hums.

I wish she was Kurenai. Ouch.

"Kakashi, I know you're awake." she says. I turn over. She is staring at me. No loner thumbing the words. Her mouth hangs open. Her jaw is set. There are creases near her island eyes. The premature lines she tried to dot up once with 45 ryu eye creamer boasting of crushed ruby and mother of pearl. Only I stopped her. Because I like the mischievous way her eyes look when they crinkle up at the corners. When they crinkle up like loved in bedsheets. Her eyes were the part of her that I loved first. And there's that word again. Love.

Ugh..... "Kakashi. I know you're awake. I see you staring right at me." says Anko. "Then why were you humming?" I ask. She cocks her head. She looks very sad. Her eyes don't crinkle. Her hands bunch the read pages into paper fists. She will peel the words off. And throw them at me. If she gets mad enough.

She will tell me about gorgeous men. With unlined, unworked faces. Scarless faces. And places with palisades and world peace picket signs. Coats made of mink and little boys with smiling faces like their fathers. Who do not drink sake all day. She will tell me all of the things I haven't been able to give her.

"I'm sorry." I breathe. "For what?"

I don't know what I am sorry for. For the humming. For not being able to stop the humming. For the words. Or the scars. Or the empty places in our home reserved for little boys and mink coats and peace signs. All things never to come. Or for the sake. Ow. Ow. Ouch.....my head hurts really bad. It's squeezing the life out of me.

"Kakashi, you don't look so good darling." she says a little sadly. "Let me go down to Tanzaku town and get some of those lemons you like." she says. But I do not like lemons. She likes lemons. I don't. Lemons are my very least favorite thing in this ow oh man. My. Head. Hurts.

"Okay, honey?" she asks

"Okay."

She's close enough to pat my feet. She pats my feet with those sturdy fingers. Carpenter's hands. Fighting hands. They were the second part. Her hands were the second thing about her that I came to love. Or like. Whatever. Ouch. Her hands are strong and small and thick. Unlike the rest of her. Unlike the rest of her body. She is a born beanpole.

She stands. Her eyes are still humming. Her mouth is silent, however. The papers she was reading are flat now in the chair. The page showcases a display of 15 ryu onesies. In pink if it's a girl pink, and blue if it's a boy blue. And patterns. Anko turns.

And it must be the light.

It must be this monster headache. It must be the light because....

"Anko!" I call panicked. Makes my head panicked. Ow. I wince. She turns around and no.

Not there.

Okay......My imagination. "Yes, Kakashi."

"Nothing."

"As usual."

When she turns to leave I hear the sound again. Low and ominous. In the back of her throat. Tuneless. The sun is ow not being ouch good to my ugh...hangover. I lie back. Ow ow ow ouch. Love. Headache. I need a glass of sake.

**And the newest installment in our little KakaKure adventure. This chapter just happens to be coupled with the next one. So go on over......and please Review as usual. ^.^**


	8. Lemons

Lemons

_**I don't know if I could stand **_

_**another hand upon you**_

_**All I know is that I should......**_

She is so young and unnecessarily lovely when I first see her, that suddenly everything fits into perspective and it all makes sense. So it feels like I should gather It up, It being all of the strands of jealously and anger and sadness. And braiding Them together let Them lock Themselves in a box and be put away. Somewhere They will extinguish one another before I will forget my pretense at self control and be drawn to Them, empty fingers longing for satisfaction. It is obvious that he and she are made for each other.

Since the sort of split with Kakashi my hands have felt empty, and nothing has been able to fill them. No food. No hobby. No understanding. No Asuma. I sit and worry and wonder why the air passes through them and escapes in slices between the fingers. I lie in bed at night awake, palms up and open, fingers just barely curling around something that's not really there, but feels as if it's sucking the life out of me.

And I can only dream of him and his body that was like my bread then, and the taste of his lips, and the strong smell of cinnamon that hid like a defiant child in the crevices of his body that I liked to search. And his living silver hair that swam like silk ribbons through my fingers. But I don't ever dare to say his name. Not even to whisper it. Not even in conversation to Asuma who believes I am finally firmly satisfied with my life. Who thought enough to buy me a charm bracelet sparkling with little dangling cat faces.

By the third day it all became too much. I left for Tanzaku Town to the market in search of those perfect little round grapes, because they're all I can think of that might serve as some connection. And like the speaking of the devil's name I see her. There she is.

It's uncommon. The way she looks and the way she's dressed. In a dress that is cut lower than most of the village elders would approve in front, and clings like a paper seal in back. And her hips are round and expand smoother, wider than I remember. Legs used to parting, I think at first. Then bite it back.

At first glance she's too short. And the spiky messy array of her hair is off putting. This much is easy to say. But there's just _something_ about her. Some radiation emanating from her bones that cuts into your empty space. I see the length of her neck, and the curve of her spine. I see her mouth, how it's made like a clock to turn up at just the right time and smile a smile that must be as piercing as they eyes. Which are the murky color, grey-gold, of a hazel nut almost. But is more like aged champagne. Is more like broken bottles dyed by sunset and filled with dreams scrawled on papers sealed, and sent off on the river.

I see that her energy is taking over the area and my God she's a beautiful woman. I turn away instantly and bury my eyes in the display of grapes. I try to deny it, but I can see that everyone else in the market is looking at her too. Is watching her, and weighing her, and whispering. And she moves over to the fruit and starts picking up the lemons one by one. Her hands are large and strong and wide. The knuckles are big and the caramel colored nail beds look delectable. I can't bring myself to not hate her. I can't bring myself to look away.

Her skin glows like polished china. She has that air about her. She is an entity. And it all makes sense that he....that she picks up the lemon and bites into it, skin and all, the yellow bursting wide open and seeming to paint her face in sunshine.

The juices squirt everywhere and down her chin, and I see her head tilt back, and the laughter that comes out of it seems five times too big for her. She says "Yep, that's a good one." She takes the bitten into lemon to the vendor and three more and pays for them while his diluted eyes are transfixed on her breasts through the slit in her dress.

And I know that I should turn away, duck my head and fade into the grapes. But even when she's done paying, and turns around to go. Even when our eyes meet I continue to stare back just as the vendor stares at her back as if her shoulder blades were made of precious metals.

"Kurenai!" Anko exclaims loudly, and as she comes towards me I find it in myself to force a smile. I half hope that she will wrap me in an awkward hug so that some of her light will transpose onto me, and half hope that she will hug me so that I can force a kunai between her shoulder blades.

"Anko." I say fighting a grimace. And she doesn't hug me. But she does touch my arm briefly. The light stays with her, it doesn't move to me. It must be a sign.

She is still smiling widely at me. And she looks like Him. I can see Him all over her. I am beginning to feel sick again. I reach for a pound of grapes.

"How are you?" asks Anko, waving around the hand that holds the lemons, the injured lemon still spurting juice. She licks it off her fingers. I watch her tongue and wonder if she.....no. "Fine, Anko. I'm....I'm good." I say. Be happy. Act natural. Act happy. Be natural. I smile.

I rip off one of those little plastic bags and put some grapes into it. "You sure?" asks Anko. I pause. What is she getting at? Does she know after all? Did he tell her? I look into her eyes. She' s still smiling. "Yes...." I say.

"Oh!" she laughs. "I thought you'd be a little miffed. About the mission and all. You know having to drop in and fill my position on such a short notice. If you ask me you're way better at this kind of thing anyway so I don't know why Lady Tsunade didn't choose you to begin with. You know...this...espionage stuff..." Anko grins.

Espionage? I must have been zoned out when Tsunade was detailing that little part. Nevertheless I don't show any surprise to Anko. She flips those rowdy bangs of hers and the light goes out and then back in to her.

"It's no problem since you're sick." I say. Anko tilts her head back and laughs again, and heads turn but she doesn't seem to notice. "Yeah, man." she says and leans in to elbow me conspiratorially, winking one dream gold eye.

"Sick." she laughs.

And her grin spreads so wide that it might envelope both of us. I wonder briefly what it might be like to be trapped inside her mouth behind that wide white grin. He seems to like it there.

"You're not sick?" I ask. "Oh yeah." she says and waves it away with her hand again, making the lemons spit. "Just not the kind of sick you're thinking of I just need leave time."

Well, how many kinds of sick are there? "I'm confused." I confess. "Well," she says and looks up at me from under those dye purple bangs. And then she does something odd. Something I will never be able to erase from my mind.

She reaches down and pulls the material of her dress taut against her midriff. And at first I don't get it. But then....I understand. Then, I see it. The slight bulge of her stomach. Small, but round and firm and protruding and THERE. The grin has reached the limits of wide and brightness. "Two months in, baby." she says.

I turn away and throw up.

**WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA'AM! There you have it !Twisting and turning is our little plot muahahaha hehehe. Aren't you excited??? Review as usual, plz.**


	9. Dividends

Dividends

dividend (noun)- a quantity to be divided

_**Time to make one last appeal for the life I lead**_

_**Stop and stare**_

_**Yeah, you'd do anything to get what's fair**_

_**But fair ain't what you really need....**_

_**Oh, do you see what I see?........**_

The building across from Asuma's is called the Suicide Tower, because all of the Slot Machine Bums ,and Pigeon Chasing Alcoholics, and Broken Lollipop girls often climb up there to jump off. It's the tallest building on this side of town other than the Great Stone Faces who's stern stone set lips discourage any kind of candid actions like that. The Suicide Tower is generally the best place to fly if you're willing to try it out. Just to see if you actually can like everyone keeps saying of course.

It's not tall enough to cause a scene for every idle passing stranger, content in their rib cage canned universe to see. But if the fall doesn't kill you, the vacant eyes of the cobblestone streets below certainly will. I can imagine that the blood makes daisies sprout, pilfering up through the cracks like headstones.

Oddly enough, people still live in the Suicide Tower. Despite it's reputation for blood and guts there's an influx of tenants may'be every week. May'be because the rent is cheap and the upkeep is really good. But perhaps it's for something different. Something darker. The excitement. May'be they like the idea of the excitement.

The possibility of pure bloody chaos. They all enjoy the fact that they might one day just be looming at their kitchen window ironing a shirt crisp, and see a desperate body shoot flailing past, a downward spiraling rocket. Something way more exciting than the calls of murmuring voices from behind window bars, and the puppet's dance of male and female shapes joining silhouettes, pressed behind brocade curtains against the backdrop of lemon yellow lamplights at night.

As luck would always have it, Asuma's apartment where I've decided to stay....lives in the immediate vicinity, and the Suicide Tower is right outside my window; it's claw like roof tiles seeming to scratch at the plate grass like an angry tree.

The sickness lasts for days and for years, it seems. And mornings wind up into balls of bed sheets, my head poking just above them, and my eyes always seeming to find the window, hoping may'be for some of that excitement.

My stomach keeps churning and churning. And stillness of just before dawn breaths are shattered by the urge to vomit becoming an iron will. The bile comes hot and fast and demanding. And clenched jaws and closed tight lips aren't enough resist it. The days go fine. And the nights sweat out the day's missing fever.

In nightmares I dream of neglected spirits and golden doe eyes. I see the curve of Kakashi's smile and his bones curve away from me. Everything is lost in an instant, and I wake-up screaming, pillow clenched in fist, stomach turning, and Asuma barely sifted awake beside me.

I keep telling myself that it's _Her. _That's it's _Her_ magnetism, and the way _She_ looked at me, grinning, when she pulled that fabric taut across her belly. I keep telling myself that it's _Her_ belly that is making me sick. Thoughts of them nestled between the sheets, him whispering words to her that belong to me, and she grasping and caressing parts of him that belong to me. I cry about this, but I began to realize that it's something _more._

It's Asuma who finally makes this all clear to me. Somedays he wakes up and is fine, smoking, kissing, heeding. Then other days he is the charcoal black eyes and the iron grip. He's the man that I wanted....that I want Kakashi to save me from.

One day when he beats me to my knees for something I've said, when he leaves me there like a puzzle that has been knocked off of the table and needs to be re-pieced again; I sit and wrap my arms around my middle like I always do when I'm trying to keep everything in. Except this time it's different. This time I clench my forearms tight against myself and something clenches....kicks back. Something inside of me.

This is not something that needs to be kept a secret, I realize.

Except for from Asuma because as soon as I feel the kick. Firm, but gentle. Piercing yet subtle. Simply saying I'm here and not I'm here to hurt you. I know that the baby is Kakashi's. My first instinct is to cry. I sit there in the middle of the floor and rub my belly. My suddenly seemingly round belly. An overflowing belly.

And my hands work, and I try to bring myself to cry. My mouth gets hard and dry, but the tears never come. My nose is bleeding from Asuma's fists. The blood drips down the soft philtrum of my lips and on to my tongue in stringy rivulets. And I can't help but to smile.

Because I'm having a child. Me. A child. A baby. Kakashi's baby. It's like having Kakashi, a little bit of him inside of me. Something Asuma's greedy violent love can't take away. I feel happiness creep in a little. A few tangerine rays of sunshine peeking in over my shoulder. Warm and good against the back of my neck. This warm, good love. A baby.

"Kurenai." Asuma says, and his voice sounds strained when comes padding back into the room, barefoot and devoid of Cigarette. He stresses each individual syllable of my name, his words pressed malleable like cake icing that has been spread too thin. The way he always sounds when he's hurt me and is "sorry."

"Kurenai." he repeats and I try not to rub my belly again as he comes towards me. But the glee is becoming an itch to touch it, touch it. Touch Kakashi. Kakashi.....

"Kurenai? Are you okay, honey? Say something."

In just a few seconds a part of me that was an organ has become a Life. A stomach has become a Belly. Which is something large and beautiful, the core of a fruit that will soon overflow with new beauty. Asuma takes my arm at the crook of my elbow, and gently pulls me to my feet. I sway a little, dizzy, and he steadies me with an arm around my waist, his filthy fingers touching the cloth over my belly. Touching Kakashi. I shove him off, but he doesn't seem to notice.

His eyes glow with repentant light. "I'm so sorry, babe. Are you okay?" I smile "I'm fine." He wipes the blood from my face and I don't even wince. Suddenly, I know how this is supposed to go. "I'm fine, but I just need to run out one second for something." I say.

"Oh." says Asuma and his head bounces back like a rebounded basketball. Then "Oh." and he recovers, shrugs and turns his back. His eyes are on the kitty shaped clock hanging on the wall. The one he got me whatever holiday he even bothered with a gift. "You will be back though. Won't you?" he asks the black plastic cat face. It doesn't answer him, and for once neither do I.

At Kakashi's doorstep I have a thousand thoughts running on roller-coaster tracks through my mind. They crash and explode against one another and by the time Kakashi comes to the door the words are raining down into my mouth, burning bits of rubble.

But the sight of him washes all of that away. He takes my breath away with the obvious beauty that was apparent to me the first time I laid eyes on him naked and vulnerable, between moon beams that touched down through the windows, and with eyes that built soul-tie bridges between us.

He's hastily pulling the mask up over his nose, his hair swimming to the left on strong legs in that endearing way. Fully clothed and rumpled clothing at that, and yet I'm remembering him. Every scar and curve and line of his body. Every minuscule breath of his touch. Soft tongue and softer lips. Imploring eyes.

I want to hold him. I stand there staring at him there, and then subconsciously my hands touch my body, my belly, where he is also. I want to touch him even as he looks at me, and the bored answers in his eyes become confused questions. When he looks at me and recognizes me, and realizes that I'm here and instead of where I should be at this moment, and at every moment until the mission.

"Kurenai?" he asks, and reaches up to scratch at the back of his head. "What are you doing here? I thought..." I hate the harsh whisper in his voice, so I cut him off. "We need to talk, Kakashi."

He stares at me blankly, then half turns putting one arm up and leaning back against the doorframe to gaze behind him into the comfort of his house. When he looks back at me his face is desperate, eyebrows making desperate arches above those pleasurably inky eyes.

"Is everything alright, I mean is...are you alright?" he asks me.

I sigh. "Anko's in there, isn't she?" I say. Because it can't really be called a question. I can tell by the hushed hurry of his voice. The almost defensive hunch of his shoulders against the doorframe. And that one solid arm stretching like a bar between his body and the entrance. Between me and the entrance. He stares at me, hollow eyed and I can see that his fingers are starting their familiar tremble.

I think of her interlocking her strong fingers with those delicate flitting ones. I think of her hands in his hair, and her mouth on his body swallowing it down like sucked on and bitten into lemons. He keeps giving me that stare with those shaking hands, and for some reason I'm now determined to get inside the house.

I don't care and I think that she should see. I at least need to see her, need to tell her something. To spit the aching words burning inside my mouth into her face and burn the beautiful glowing skin off. I know just what I'll say. See you don't have him. He's not all yours, the way you thought. I have a part of him deep inside just the way you do. He's just as much mine as he is yours.

I step forward and Kakashi doesn't resist me. He keeps his eyes on me, but moves back so that I can claw into his space. I close my eyes and breathe in his air. Now that I think about it, I can't count how many times we've been in my apartment. Countless nights spent loving, lounging, jerking, on my pillows, my counters, my carpets, my bedsheets. Not once did he grapple me over to his place.

I look around at the low ceiling. The plain furnishings. Potted plants, bookshelf, couch. I watch, touching things. Dusting my fingertips. Tracing lazy circles on his carpet-less floorboards with careful steps. My belly yearns.

He's watching me, running shaking hands through his hair. Trembling, seizing fingers that move as if they're dancing around a spitfire. I've never seen his hands shake like this before. I stop walking, stand and stare. We gaze at each other face to face for one wild second. Then he folds those dancing hands together behind his head and opens his mouth to say something, but I speak faster.

"Kakashi, I'm pregnant."

His jaw moves, but his eyes die. I look away. I can hear him exhale, hear him turning his footsteps walking circles. "Kurenai." he begs me. "Yes." I say finally, turning back to look at him. His hair gripped tightly in those shaking hands. His skin looks ready to explode. But his eyes are lightless. Dead.

"That's impossible." he breathes. I walk towards him. Take his hands and put them on me, on my belly, on him in me, on Us. As soon as his fingers fold around the tautness of Us he jerks back as if burned. He turns away, mumbling swear words in furious strings. He turns his back to me almost wrenching his own hair from his head it seems with those spastic hands. stare at his broad back.

And then the tears come.

Warm and fast. Washing down my cheeks. This is not the way it's supposed to be happening. He was supposed to be...happy. "Kakashi." I choke out. Now it's my turn to beg. His shoulder blades tense like the word, like me saying his name stabs him, he still doesn't turn around to face me when he says "It can't be mine."

I think that I have just had an abortion.

Those words, full of pure malice, melted sugar hate kick me in the stomach. Knock the wind out of me. Knock me over with a force that might as well dislodge the fetus from my flesh, now. "Kakashi!" I scream. "Don't say that!" I'm not understanding. I beg him. I touch his arm, but he whirls around manic; those dead eyes pressing into mine, trembling hands push the hair from my face even as he says "I'm sorry, Kurenai. But I can't be the father. It's not mine. It's...."

"It is yours!" I scream. He tries to shush me. He puts those delicate fingers like bone white silk gags dancing across my mouth. But I bite him. Hard enough to draw blood. He jerks back, yelping, shaking those bone white silk gags where they have begun to unravel in sticky cherry juice red. And I'm screaming at him "It is yours! It is!"

He pleads with me "Keep your voice down, please." cupping one dripping hand under the air to catch that precious red. "It is yours!" but it's too late. Somewhere in the back of my mind I registered when she first came in. Somehow, subconsciously I knew she was always there like a neglected spirit. The tormented ghost of a happiness that died before it could even breach the coastline of joy, just waiting in the corner for an opportunity.

She stands there beside the bookcase in a doorway that must lead to someplace that makes it easy to creep in and watch. She's wearing a large shirt that drapes from her shoulders, hiding her belly from him and in that instant I realize that he doesn't know, and she never told him. Now it's probably too late.

Her eyes are war trenches. Dug deep into her skull and pitted to be filled with the barbed wire that runs down her cheeks in salt water drops. Even though I was the one screaming she's not looking at me, only him. Only him. And he stares back at her stricken, the hands shaking and spraying blood like a rotating sprinkler.

He doesn't try to speak, and neither does she. I feel the moment is beyond explanation. Beyond words, beyond breaths and feelings, now. That time is all gone, and there is only room for action. She walks up to him and slaps him.

His face careens to the side, neck twist, and he does nothing. He doesn't even crank his face back over to look at her. He just stands there, staring dully to the side when she hits him again. And again. And again. And again. And the slaps turn into fists. And soon he's sinking to the floor, cradling his chin to his knees while she pounds him. Chipping away at his skull, crying. Screaming in sounds that transcend language. The pure animal shrieks of a mother disowned, of a lover betrayed, of a woman scorned.

And I'm sorry that I'm this...this thing that causes the heart wrenching roars, guttural primal cries to burst from the chest of a woman. A woman who's beautiful. Who's civil. Who's just like me. I'm ripping open.

She hits him until she can't lift her arms anymore. Until the belly gets in the way, and she's doubled over heaving for breath in between the screaming sobs. When she can finally move, she turns past me and sobs out the front door.

Kakashi doesn't move. When the door slams behind her, the sudden silence is more destructive than all of the screaming noise. It echoes a heavy truth that pushes me to move towards Kakashi, and refuses to let him lift his head.

"Kakashi." I whisper, words faltering again in this fractured moment. This broken-ness. When he lifts his head, the mask has slid down around his chin. His right eye is large, the flesh purple and crusting over, and the tiny slit of an iris that points out is neither inky nor gorgeous. It's hateful.

Full of deep, ugly hate. "Kurenai, get out of my house." he commands softly and flatly. And so I know that what he's really saying is get out of my life. So, I leave without argument.

**Well, things are taking a turn for the dramatic here aren't they? Whew, can you feel the tension in the air? What happens next, you ask? Well, there is another chapter just waiting for you.....^.^**


	10. Kakashi: Epiphany

Epiphany

epiphany(noun)- a sudden intuitive perception of, or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something

_**It's win or lose, not how you play the game**_

_**And the road to darkness has a way of always knowing my name**_

_**Nobody knows the rhythm of my heart when I'm lying alone in the dark**_

_**Nobody knows.....**_

The last woman that I got pregnant I dealt with neatly and discreetly. She was a fling. She was one night. Of sake and desperation. She was beautiful. But nothing. And she wanted much more than that beautiful nothingness. She wanted days and years of devotion. She wanted 18 years of time. At least.

She wanted my "perfect nose". And my "cupid's bow mouth". She wanted my "bedroom eyes". And my "come to me smile". All to stick on some other little face. She wanted my kisses. And my hugs. And my love to give to someone else. Some little body inside of her. So far inside that even I could not reach it with my sex. So far inside that even I could not touch it. Or kiss it. Until it came out through the birth canal. But by then it would not be mine anymore. It would be another person all together. That could choose to love me or hate me. And demand nothing but love in return.

It was a greedy idea. And I wanted none of it. I didn't want It. It could have been as much mine as it could have been anyone else's. But she was certain.

So I baked a cake. I baked a cake for her. Because that was all I could think of to give. For what I was going to take away. I baked a cake.

It was black forest. It leaned to the left a little. And was flat on one side. It had whips of white icing. Dotted with cherries. She was allergic to cherries. I had hoped she would get the message.

She did get the message. Very well. Very clearly. And without doubt. When I showed up on her doorstep holding that cake. When I told her "get rid of it". She threw the cake in my face. And called me names that rubbed me raw. And I said that I was glad she understood. That this way was better. That it would be best if she didn't call anymore. That it wouldn't hurt as much. She slammed the door in my face.

She left me there. With cherries sticking to my cheeks. With whipped icing in my eyelashes. And the next time I saw her she was pin thin. And her stomach was a barely there board. She had been suctioned. And she wouldn't look me in the face. That was the last time. I have been very careful since then. But now.

Now. Now what am I going to do? Now what can I do? It's Kurenai. It's Kurenai. And not one night of sake and desperation. It's Kurenai.

Next to me in bed Anko turns over. She turns over to face me. She insists on keeping the windows in the house up. So the dark gets in. So the moon gets all over her. She looks pale white. Except for the shades around those closed eyes.

The wind has blown her hair out. Strands of it stick to her mouth. Stick to her lips. They are wet and open. After every breath a low throbbing noise comes out of her mouth. She hums even in her sleep, now. She hums at me. Now. Even while her eyes are closed.

I put my arms around her. Her cold white skin. I pull her head on my chest. And she hums directly to me. Now. Directly to me. Now, I get it. Before I thought "I am always here." Now I get it. But it is a long tiresome moment before I realize that the throbbing noise is in my head. That I am hugging a pillow to my body. Just a pillow. Because Anko is not here. She has not come back yet.

She will not come back.

Now, I get it. Kurenai. A baby. A real live freaking baby.

God?

If anyone is listening I will dream. Tonight I will dream of being pregnant again. This time it will really be a baby. It will have little baby fingers. Long and thin. And slimy like tentacles. The little baby fingers will wind around my neck. Like tentacles and squeeze. It will have little baby eyes. Large. And Sharingan red. Failure red. God.

My cheek is wet with tears. In my mind's eye they are pressed to the top of Anko's head. In my mind's eye her hair gets plastered to my cheek. And my body shakes. But my arms are still around her. Her mouth is still humming. But her eyes are open. Now. She sees the tears but not the reason. She says "Kakashi." mistaken.

She will not come back.

They say you become a new person every 7 years. Someone different. But I wouldn't know. They say having a baby changes your life. They say loving a child is a whole new kind of love. Unselfish and unconditional. A love you give taking nothing. But how do I know? God? I've never had that. I've never known that love, God. I've never done this. God. I wouldn't know.

**Thank my beautiful neighbor for introducing my family to freshly imported German black forest cake with cherries and whipped icing on top. ^.^ Thank Kakashi for bad life choices and half-prayers half dribble. And thanks to you all for taking time out to read this little story of mine. I decided to include definitions for the titles of both this chap. and the previous one because I think Dividends is a weird title and wanted to kind of explain where it came for. Also I don't think many people out there know what an epiphany is so....anywayz 3. Time is winding up for the somewhat dismembered KakaKure. There are a few chapters left in the whole story. DUNDUNDAAAAAAAA! Review as usual plz.**


	11. Kakashi: Gone

Gone

_**You see yourself in the mirror  
And you feel safe cause it looks familiar  
But you afraid to open up your soul  
Cause you don't really know, don't really know  
Who he is, the person that's deep within  
And its gone... gone... going...**_

At the Memorial Stone I see the girl. She is standing there. Just standing there. Idle. She has flowers in her hands. She is crushing them to her chest. The flowers. She is beautiful. May'be. Young at least. And tall. And thin. Like so many of them. Like a waif. I am thinking you'd call that a waif. But I wouldn't know. She is the color of paled fruit. Her lips are soft. Feminine. And gasping words that I cannot read. From my position. She has seersucker eyes. They are large. And empty. But she doesn't cry.

She is wearing one of those hats. One of those slouchy hats. That fit over the whole head like a cooking net. So that I cannot see her hair. Only a wisp of a curl. A blonde wisp of a curl against her forehead. She cannot see me from where I am. And so keeps talking. Gasping at the Memorial Stone. Crushing petals in her hands. But she doesn't cry.

It is odd. It strikes me as odd to find someone else here. Here where I have come to be alone. Here where I am the only person that exists. Apart from _Them_ who I do not want to share. Especially with someone like her. Someone who looks like her. Young and vibrant and who would not understand the way the things I say to _Them_. And if she is here _They_ will not talk back to me. Which might be more more more than I can take. So I hang back here and watch. Her.

For a moment I think about what if I could take her and make love to her. I imagine myself between her thighs. Pushing that ridiculous hat back from her head. Touching her body in the tender spots where the hair still feels like fleece. Naked and pure and her eyes large and innocent sucking me in. I imagine the taste of that feminine mouth.

And then I hate myself. I hate myself. Because sex and sake seems to be all there is to fill these holes in my body. Because my throat is burning. And because I am thinking of sex with her when I am old enough to be a brother or an uncle or someone she might trust instead of someone who thinks of kissing her feminine mouth that will whisper scream his name like _She_ used to do. Before she left. Because everythingthat mattered is gone. I am gone. Gone. Everything.

I move. She hears and looks up. She sees me. For the first time notices me. And looks afraid. Terrified. A deer noticing a wolf in the bush. Her mouth moves at me. And I imagine she is humming. The world hums. But she is really saying nothing and I've got to get more sake in my system because she turns and goes and I am still there. But not here. Not inside. I am Gone.

I am not going up to the Memorial Stone. To see _Them_. _They_ will make me know what I have become. That _She_ is Gone. Gone. Gone. That I am Gone. With no place to go to because I cannot stay in that empty house. Because I cannot go back there. And fester. And rot. In our furniture sheets air bed if she is going to be Gone. If she is not coming back I cannot go.

I sit down in the grass. My pager buzzes in my pocket. I take it out and look at it. Kurenai. When I chuck it into the woods it sail sail sails away in a wide arc over the forest trees. Gone. Gone. Gone. Everything is.....

**There it is once again Ladies and Gents. As Kakashi loses his grip on sanity Kurenai loses her grip on something else in our next chapter!!! As the story winds down things wind up!!! Also just a little suggestion. The next chapter is a little graphic....as in....not for the faint of heart so...at your own risk peeps. ^.^**


	12. Saving Grace

Saving Grace

_**Watching myself when I"m taking strides....**_

_**and it feels like sabotage when I'm pulling triggers back on myself**_

_**And it feels so real from the outside looking in**_

_**And it feels so real from the outside**_

_**From the out**_

_**Tyrant.....**_

Kakashi won't answer any of my calls. It's been a week. Soon the mission will start, we'll have reconnected and I won't be able to take the way he'll look at me when that happens if it's going to be the same way he looked at me then, crumpled on the floor with that hate. That coarse unadulterated hate that frothed out of his eyes and bubbled onto me, overflowing. Burning me like splashed acid.

In the bathroom at Asuma's apartment I study my reflection carefully in the mirror. The woman that looks back at me has contrived a sort of regal majesty about her. Her crimson eyes are calm, knowing. Her hair falls thick and dark around her shoulders, a graceful crown. The slightest smirk tickles the corners of her lips. The inevitable can sometimes be a release.

Especially when it comes to Kakashi. I would do anything to make him happy. I know that, now. I will do anything to put things back together. To slide them evenly into their perspectives and make everything the way that it was before. My heart pounds like a criminal against it's cavity. I can feel it's veiny hands around the bars of my rib cage wrenching them back, threatening to break free. Cupped in the palm of my hand the pills are restless. Ecstatic. They chirp to me sweet nothings. Promising this will surely fix it.

I trace the bulge of my belly with my empty hand. I'll make him happy enough to love me again.

"Kurenai." the bathroom door bangs open, a killswitch piercing the vice-like grip of whatever spell had been holding me and Asuma comes in hot eyed and wild faced. He's half dressed, pants unbuckled and left to hang open like rifled through grocery bags, goods barely concealed, may' be previously getting ready for bed but now here.

A neck vein sticks out curling around his throat, explosive tubing and when he reaches behind him and closes the bathroom door like he doesn't want anyone to hear, even though we are the only ones here, I know something is going to give. Someone is going to end up floored. Someone is going to bleed. And I can guess who it will be. In my hands the pills have begun to melt. Their liquid coatings run and blend together down my arm. The color is a very impressive red.

Asuma and I face one another. I get a grip on the kitchen sink and the air between us is thick. Asuma's eyes burn holes into me and his hair is wild and he still has that wildness about him. Clinging to him as if he just rolled through a field of it. The stench of anger is impossible to suction from clothing from skin from bone. It permeates. It erodes and decays.

His eyes are locked on mine when he says "Anko called and told me what happened with you and Kakashi." I can't take my eyes off of those hot ones. Burning, charred, tar metal black. Burning. No words come to me. We stare face to face for one nanosecond, for one year of electrified silence.

Then he uppercuts me in the jaw, and as my knees buckle from the force, and I slip down, I think _not like this._ I can't let it end this way. The hand gripping the sink finds a bar of soap. Asuma looms over me snarling, poised for another attack and I chuck the soap at him. It doesn't hurt, but it takes him by surprise. And while he fumbles I bolt for the door as fast as I can. "Stop!" he grunts behind me.

I feel his hand clap against the back of my neck like a giant metal maw and the scream dies in my throat when he jacks me backwards. My hands instantly go, a protective casing, against my belly. My thoughts go to Kakashi and suddenly all of the feelings I had before now, before Asuma bolted into the bathroom are gone. Are bloodied and evaporated. And I can't help feeling that this baby just might be my saving grace. The one thing I have to hold on to in this world. The looping twine, forever linking me to Kakashi without risk of burn out or lost love.

So as Asuma chucks me face forward towards the tub, I grip the shower curtain desperately, but my own body weight destroys my balance and I'm knocked to my knees again. This time knocking my head painfully against the tub.

The blow makes my head spin. My skull erupts and I fight against the curtain of darkness that rushes over me. Asuma looms in and out of focus above me, his static-y shadow and the volume of his gruff voice seeming to be too far away for touch. I close my eyes and he kicks me in the stomach. The pain just barely breaches my fading consciousness. I can't move. The umbilical cord between my brain and body has been severed. And I feel out of my skin, even as he leans in to my face, gnashing teeth and flaming eyes like two devilish lamps glinting out of his skull.

I think I raise my hand up. I think I mumble a desperate "Please." before he kicks me again and then I black out completely.

For the rest of forever it seems I shift painlessly in and out of consciousness. And that night I float up above myself. Up above, on the outside looking in on a woman as she drags her ruined body through the dark empty space down into the basement. And overcome with pain, drowning in fervent tears, lies flat on her back, legs spread in welcoming of imaginary male hips, to offer with life shortening pain and full grunts a gift. That she pushes from down deep inside her and with shaking hands, she pulls it out of herself. A thick blob of once breathing tissue that slips wet, red, and ready from between her knees.

**Yes, yes, I am an evil, horrible malicious person. Don't you just love me?LOL. Sadly these are the way things will end for poor Kurenai for now, but there is more to come!!! Stay tuned for the next few chapters of Passing Strangers. *says in announcer-ly voice* To Be Continued....................Review as usual plz. ^.^**


	13. In A Box

In a Box

_**Tonight, you arrested my mind**_

_**When you came to my defense**_

_**With a knife in the shape of your mouth**_

_**in the form of your body**_

_**With the wrath of a god…..**_

Three days after the womb is destroyed, the mission begins. Asuma, Kakashi, and I are to travel to a small clearing in the bowels of the Hidden Leaf Forest, and meet up with Raidou and Genma there in the intestines. We've been ordained to take down a small group of foreign nin who seem to have built a base that is carrying out suspicious activity there.

The Special Jonin were sent discreetly weeks prior to make sure things don't get out of hand before our arrival. The timing is to be precise like the strike of a double headed snake. Meet no demands, take no prisoners. We meet outside the village before dawn cracks open and bleeds her glowing guts.

I'm the first to arrive, and in the burst forth red of the sky I'm half crazed. My hair wild and tangled, eye like half rooted plants raw and growing untamed. Between my thighs still burns with the memory of warm oozing liquid. My hips still feel ground into the cement of basement floor, and my back feels burnished with the pain of arching.

I can understand Kakashi's hands shaking. Because even if you can force the mind to forget, the hands always remember. My fingers tremble with the remembrance of the feel of that quickly extinguished life. The jellied flesh that is squished between my pulling fingers. The hardness where there should have been softness. The curl of severing veins and cords like nooses twining around my wrists as I gaped and pulled and gaped wider and pulled.

The only thing that refuses to come now are the tears. And the emotions because after I rocked my dead baby in my arms, I bashed those useless things over the head and stuffed and locked them in a treasure box in my heart. And nothing on this Earth will ever be able to pry that box open.

I shift my weight and the rucksack of supplies on my back burns, the straps cutting into my shoulders chafe. Just as well. This skin has forgotten a tender touch. There's nothing like being once full and now irrevocably empty. There's nothing to explain away the It of being barren.

Kakashi arrives before Asuma surprisingly. I see him coming from a long ways away, the silver hair shining like a beacon. I expect the rush of breath knocked out of me, the pull of heartstrings, the flood of hormones, the…_something._ But nothing comes. The box inside my chest rumbles aching to be opened, may'be, but the locks are welded fast.

Up close the shell of him looks worse for wear than I do. A sweater that has unraveled to the point of patched up holes and mix-colored stitching. His naturally pale skin looks the color of milk, now. And the permanent marker black under his pensive eye would terrify me if there was fear left to be felt. He swallows slow and hard, mouth dry, jaw jerk, and his hair points in all different directions like hands desperate for a touch of help from anywhere.

He stuffs those trembling hands in his pockets, and they probably have not stopped trembling since they danced that fire dance around themselves while Anko pounded his face open. He looks at me and right through me at the same time. And I know he is seeing everything. His eye gives a nervous twitch, but the expression there is oddly, blatantly, calm, and the hatred rises up in me hot and fierce, and so strong that it almost moves me to take that clothed neck in my hands and twist until something gives.

His eyes are on the absence of Us, and his gaze burns the between my thighs where the memory of it is warm and alive chapped and beginning to bleed.

"What happened to……."

I turn away from him. Can't bear to answer. Can't bear to look at him. If I don't it won't hurt so much that God it feels like all of my joints are coming loose, and my bones are caving in, and my body's becoming collapsible. Kakashi doesn't finish his question. It dies in his throat like that bloody faceless tissue died in it's own juices, a red fish swimming then suddenly belly up.

My chest gets tight with ache. But it's a no go. The box there rattles plaintively.

When Asuma comes the air changes. He looks at Kakashi and they suddenly in their own universe are pulled magnetically closer together, charged. It doesn't move me. I stand back and watch their hatred, watch their blood boiling. When their foreheads almost touch I wish they would just do it.

Fight.

Rip each other to shreds.

Destroy.

Carnage.

And blood. But Asuma backs up, and his nostrils flair, his eyes are ablaze, but there's no malice in his mouth. There's a loose kind of smile that contradicts everything. The raw animal rage in Kakashi's eyes. The tight blood thirsty screams pouring out of his fist. They've reached an agreement. However one sided…..

"Let's just do our jobs." says Asuma. Kakashi says nothing, simply stands there glaring with those raging eyes. But Asuma turns to go at that. And as the village gates open, we head out, and he doesn't even look at me once.

We walk in total silence in single file. Asuma, me, then Kakashi. We stop every so often for a drink or the pull of nature calling. Then we set off again. By the time we reach the campsite where we're supposed to meet Genma and Raidou, night has fallen thick and black as gunmetal. And my belly is a bottomless basin retching and empty in my body. And my legs are falling apart.

The journey was not easy on feet that had already begun to swell in preparation of new life. The walk swelled them up again and at some periods it was painful enough to beg relief, but I wasn't going to give either of the men the pleasure of seeing me unable to carry myself on the strength of my own two feet.

At the campsite however, my feet make me regret that I had not stopped to rest at least once on the journey. Genma and Raidou have already started a fire and smoked some fish by the time we arrive. While they exchange gruff low voiced pleasantries with Asuma and Kakashi I hobble over to the makeshift fireplace and sit down on a log.

The fish are blackened almost tar black and cooked whole. They've been pierced through with spear like sticks and are positioned high above the flames pointing up nobly like an army of dead soldiers. For some reason the thought and look of it disgusts me. But not enough to deter the ravenous emptiness lurking in my gut.

Getting my feet out of my shoes takes effort and pain. Peeling the cloth away sends jolts of something so viral I almost scream. I suck in air and blow it through pursed lips instead and when they are bare I examine the damage. Swollen and fat like two faceless blobs of meat. The skin cracked and bloody in some places, bulging with blisters in others. Nothing life threatening.

I shrug off my pack and instantly the muscles there seize up nice and tight as if all along they had been waiting for just the right moment to ambush me and catch me across the neck. I knead my shoulders a little, then grab for the fish stick. I bite into it without hesitation and hunger is the only thing that keeps me eating. The charred scales stick to the insides of my mouth like flakes of dried paint. They taste dirty and woodsy. Hot and hard to swallow.

The others come down and sit around the fire. Except for Kakashi who stays back resting under a giant Eucalyptus tree. His eyes burn sallow and pure in the firelight like holy fire, but his face is slumped against his hand. His backbone seems broken. Spirit dwindling.

Asuma sits next to me, but he tucks his big bulky legs in under him, canning himself in. And he seems faraway. The shadows cast a darkness like hard raw onyx under his eyeballs and the flames dance in his beard, and he looks like some otherworldly god of war or wrath, but he won't look at me.

The silence is like packed dirt at a grave sight. It packs the dirt down over our heads. It slithers up our spines and cakes under the nails and fills me up to the brim, to the eyeballs with dirt. With the sight of my own grave.

Genma scratches his arm awkwardly. His eyes I notice are brown. Like Kakashi's. The ones I grappled for by the lashes and begged to devour me. Kisses. I'd want kisses. But the box beneath the breastbone is locked. It's beginning to rust and chafe.

"So what's up with him?" Genma asks blinking those brown-like-_his _eyes and chewing a piece of pine needle softly between his lips. Genma nods to Kakashi where he is against the tree. He's resting his head back, the mask is down, the cloth crinkling like a shed skin around the base of his neck. The crescent of his naked throat is bare, and pure white like ivory marble. A swath of vulnerable pulsating flesh. I understand his need to hide it. His need for the vial of liquid in his hand. He puts it to his lips and takes a swig, the other hand knotted hopelessly through his hair.

Raidou slaps wildly at the air. "Mosquitos." he swears. "Leave _him_ be." Asuma mumbles at Genma without looking at him. He grabs a stick of pierced through fish and picks at it with his eyes. Genma clears his throat. The silence persists and for some reason Genma's dark eyes cling pleadingly to mine, but I shove them off. The fire crackles and pops between us and I imagine the screaming of the scorched fish.

"Sooo….may'be we should talk about the mission." says Raidou, a helpful, hopeful smile straining the side of his face that still remembers how. I nod and try not to stare at his injuries. At the thick beautiful bramble patch of raised flesh and soft thorns and tattered pathways charting his face like someone's world map. And remember that single stripe of imperfection marring that sultry eye. I take a bite of fish and swallow hard.

Raidou folds his hands diplomatically in front of him, and commands attention with an art. He leans forward and his gaze pierces me, and unfolds Asuma's legs, and quiets Genma with it's one drooping overly creased eyelid.

"The way Genma and I figure, we all head back to the village tomorrow." he says. "Tomorrow?" asks Asuma mildly. "But we just got here today." "Yeah, sorry for that inconvenience, bro. But we're in way over our heads here." Genma quips. He smirks kind of politely, and looks at me again. I stare back blandly and Raidou keeps talking.

"We've been watching these so called ninja. They've got a huge…and I mean _huge_ organizational thing going on. There's no way we could take them down ourselves. It's highly improbable if not impossible." Raidou says, much more kindly than it needed to be said.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Kakashi squirm. He drops the vial and an amber colored liquid spills out into the grass. For a moment illuminated in the moonlight, the traces of it moistening his lips looks like gold. Then he tilts his head.

"But we've got two of Konoha's best Jonin here." Asuma says through gritted teeth. Though I'm not sure if he's referring to himself and me or himself and Kakashi. "We're outnumbered like five million to one bro. Plain and simple." Genma says, his palms spread for emphasis. He spits the pine needle off to the side.

"Who knows how many people they've got in that base. We spied at least fifty , more or less, give or take you know what I mean? I don't know about you, but I think our chances are plenty slim against that. Skill or no skill, you know? Really we should leave right now, but since you guys just got here…you know fatigue and all….we probably wouldn't make it back in one piece…say they should hear us making noise and attack. Raidou and I are pretty sure they know we're here, it's only a matter of time before they find us out. So we leave first thing in the morning, head back to base, mission report, and request a bigger squad. That's all we can do for now." Genma says.

Then finally he shrugs and a thought occurs to me that comes out without restraint. "So basically we're sitting ducks."

All of them look at me, except for Asuma, who drops his head to stare darkly into the fire. After a while Genma looks off and Raidou stares down rubbing thoughtfully at his chin. I look over to the eucalyptus where Kakashi's sitting, but he's gone. Something like rusted over panic beats against the walls of my chest, but it hurts too much so I don't let it in. I press between my breast with my hand, trying to make sure the box is still safe.

"Don't mull it over." says Asuma, but for the first time he's looking at me and I'm not sure what exactly he's referring to. Then as quickly as our eyes meet, his turn away and he says "Let's just get some sleep and hightail it out of here in the morning."

"Agreed." says Genma.

Raidou nods and the meeting is over. The remaining fish is quickly devoured and while the men beat out the flames I take my pack, my shoes, and my screaming feet, and drag everything over to a corner of the forest clearing. I peel open my pack and unfold the canvas I brought. The nails, hammer, rope, and blankets.

I put up the tent as quickly and efficiently as my rebellious feet allow, and when I finally crawl inside of it, I'm sure that I'll never take another step on these feet again. Outside the tent everything is dark and quiet. I look up through the tarp roof, and half expect to see the thin shells of silvery stars imprinted in the dark toffee sky like chocolate chips the way they always do in the movies. But all that I see is ugly yellow taut canvas staring back at me, and the occasional shadow of a tree branch dancing low and vibrant.

Without the fire I feel a chill in my bones. I burrow under the blankets, I've got and try to stretch my legs out. My feet whimper and I wince. The night will be long and endless and restless and painful. All dark quiet and ugly yellow tarp.

I hear the sound of the zippered together tent opening being yanked down before I see the outline of his body behind the yellow fabric. I quiet and almost feel panicked, and almost stop breathing, but something about the gentle push of the foot and then the body through the opening like a curious child quiets my fear.

"Kakashi." I breathe as he kneels down, and creeps towards me in the darkness. "What are you doing?"

I can hear him moving around the tent on all fours, but he doesn't answer. The spicy masculine scent of him begins to kiss the air, as their fingers intertwine something in me kicks desperately awake.

I hear him down in back of the tent. "Kakashi?" I beg him. He parts the blanket. Pushing them from my legs. When he lifts one of my crumpled feet I can see his eyes in the darkness so large and full of something. Something hungry. He puts the foot to his lips, the battered toes in his mouth. Tasting, soaking, soothing, blessing the foot. The sensation is so strikingly pleasurable that I gasp and jerk away from him.

Suddenly my heart rate is up. And I can't control my breathing. His eyes won't get off of me. "I'm sorry." he says quietly. But I know that he is not apologizing for this moment. For this. "I'm sorry." he says again.

He takes my foot again and kisses it, then the other. Kneads them. I relax. Lie back, close my eyes. Let this unexpected pleasurableness, this tenderness, this craving take me to someplace else. It is a while before I realize I'm crying.

And he is kissing, kissing up my legs. Mumbling "I'm sorry." to my knees. His hands follow his lips and I shudder at the power in his touch. The frantic bottled up want let loose. A quiet electricity that charges him and me. Us. He kisses up my thighs between and around the memories and worships me there with his hands. When his lips are caressing my stomach he mumbles brokenly. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." and his tears press against the battered womb, the emptiness.

"It's alright."

The love we make then is so powerful it is painful. It transcends us and ourselves. And overwhelms and breaks and heals. Connects and rips asunder. It desires and devours. And comes and comes and comes.

And Kakashi wipes the tears from my eyes with his sobbing kisses and says "Please don't cry. I won't ever let anyone hurt you like that again. Believe me….if something happened to you…I…would…die."

I keep my arms around him, my smile pressed into the solidity of his chest, where I can hear his heart beat just like old times. Old loves, old nights like this one. I can hear his heart beat like the promise of a paradise, in just the same way a seashell to the ear promises a beach.

"These tears are…not for the reason you think……Kakashi I love you. More than…I don't know…anything. And if anything ever happened to _you_ I would die."

And it's by the time we drift off to sleep, Kakashi holds the treasure box in his hands, dexterous fingers carefully undoing the lock.

**Yeah…sorry for the late update on this ppl but here it is and there u are reading it, eh?!? Lol. Also sorry about the slight lemon with no warning there. But I'm almost certain you guys didn't mind it hyuk, hyuk, hyuk. Oh, I'm so dirty. *slaps self on the wrist* Bad self. Okiedokie…moving on to less of the self punishment thing the next chapter is the promised ASUMA chapter….Ready to get inside his head?**


	14. Asuma

Asuma

_**Big train rolling down the line….**_

_**Makes me worry….**_

_**Sometimes, I want to run away…..**_

_**Sometimes, I want to run away**_

I ain't never been much of a heavy sleeper. And the sun comes up too quick. When the zip to my tent yanks open I don't know what to think. But it's Genma all wide eyed, stickin' his scraggly neck through sayin' "Get up Asuma! Get up, we've got to move! The enemy nin have our location, and they're moving in on us as we speak!"

Well, all I hear is move and enemy nin, and I'm up. 'Cause I ain't got time to die today or any day soon, you know? Dyin' just ain't something I'm thinkin' I'd like to do. Least not til I get settled down or married up or something, you know? _Something_.

'Cause, I'm always livin' my life with my hands balled into fists. So, I'm ready. Genma's pushin' out of the tent and I follow him, pullin' my clothes up around myself. He looks left to right with those dough boy eyes. Those pussy eyes like a fish waitin' to be slit down the gut.

"Leave everything, we don't have time." he's sayin'. But I ain't leavin' nothing I need. So I turn and start scoopin' out all the important junk, and he keeps punkin' out like a little girl. Don't see how some boys get to be ninja unless they're men first. Genma ain't actin' like a man right now.

I got my pack on my back when I see Raidou standin' at the edge of the clearing, all spindly leg. Got his head back, lookin' up to the trees. The trees shake, and if you ain't much of a chakra reader you can still hear the people comin' like a frickin' train. Sounds like a regular old freight train.

"Get Kakashi and Kurenai up. We gotta move, man." Genma's whimperin' at me.

"Yeah."

I'll get Kurenai up first. Ain't got no love left for that woman…even if she was the last woman on Earth. 'Cause she took everything from me and still made me what I am now. This thing. But I still like her better than that man. That one eyed freak show. That walking carcass. He ain't never caused nobody anything but trouble. Too dick proud and introverted. Ain't got nothin' left to lose. That's what's the matter with him. That's the only thing that's wrong.

So, I ain't gonna apologize to nobody. 'Cause the way I see it, they got it done to 'em they deserved it. But I ain't got no candy words for nobody. And as for him I don't need to beat him up. Looks like he's doing all the beating to himself, I can see it in his eyes. So, I get to her tent and I unzip it, and get in there. And there they are, lyin' naked, and all of their bits and parts touchin'. So there ain't no mistakin' it. And Kurenai's face is right up next to _that_ face. That perfect face and there ain't no mistakin that either.

That he's got these lover's eyes browny colored and these kind of full lips and this bone structure. So, he's kinda amazing looking. And I ain't being gay or homosexual or however it's political correct to say. But it's sorta beautiful. He's kind of a beautiful thing to look at. And I ain't sayin' I'm ugly as dirt or nothin'. But I ain't that.

And they're lyin' there like two fat cats in the collar of grace. Collarbones touchin'. And something in me sees those closed lover's eyes, long lashes. Pussy.

And her mouth like a sweet red melon next to that sharp jaw. And I hear that freight train, those footsteps. It's beautiful. And inside I know I should do something. But it ain't enough. I just get that feeling. I just want to.

Ain't you ever just _wanted_ to destroy something beautiful?

So I turn back outta the tent. Ain't wake 'em up or nothin'. And I start walkin', thinkin' let 'em find them there. Let 'em die like beauty should, like a work of art. And Genma and Raidou are waitin' for me at the edge of the clearing just as ready as they ever was. Genma looks at me with those girl eyes askin' "Where's Kakashi and Kurenai?"

So, I say "They went on ahead. Must've heard the noise early and left. Left all their junk behind." even before I know I'm sayin' anything.

Raidou looks at me "Well, that was so _nice_ of them to wake us up."

"Uh-huh."

And we propell off into the trees. With the freight train at our backs. But that ain't the only reason I don't turn around to look back.

**Oh yeah I went there. So what's going to happen next my pretties?! MUAHAHAHAHAHA, only I know!!! But you are currently holding in your hands…well on your CPU screen the LAST few chapters of **_**Passing Strangers**_**. The only thing now is to see HOW it ends. Especially with Kurenai and Kakashi in dire peril!!!!! ^.^**


	15. The Kill

The Kill

_**Every time you touch me, touch me like this is the last time**_

_**Every time you love me…**_

_**Love me like you'll never see me again**_

_**Like you'll never see me again….**_

One moment I'm lying _there._ There in his arms, where the peace floods me like a river. Whose waters wash over me so that I am rocked, rocked, _rocked_ away from harm. In the cradle of something impenetrable yet beautiful enough to be gentle. Something like Love.

I'm smelling him, the scent of him prevalent and familiar. Tasting his skin, the after taste of his love in the back of my mouth. A greedy aftertaste that lingers in a bare shoulder resting next to a pair of lips, in a chest pressed to an ear, a finger curled around my own, a hip pressed against a hip, a leg thrown over.

And I study the planes of his face, the sleeping face awash with effulgence. An extraordinary beauty. A pure Summery light dancing across that Sampson's jawbone. And perhaps I am the Delilah here, but between us I think we are each other's weakness.

I would never hurt him, intentionally. Though, I think part of it is that I don't fully understand him and I don't fully know where this is taking me, taking us. If it will fill the emptiness, till the barren fields that have dried and cracked over like clay jars set aside to be forgotten in a crackling heat wave.

But part of it is that sleeping face. And the light that comes from it. Knowing that I put it there, that it was a piece of me that cut into his face and slipped a little glow beneath the skin, sewing it up with a kiss. The smile belongs to me, that hangs ripe from those cherubim lips like fat purple grapes waiting to be taken down. I'm thinking this and overcome with some boiled sense of purity.

I wrap my arms tighter around his waist, trying to be spooned a little bit inside of him. As if I could meld us together into one being that simply has only to exist in a lonely tent, on a forest floor, in a postcoital haven of treasure boxed love. Our hips grind together a little, the harder I press, his grip suddenly tightens on my hand and he moans a little in his sleep. A deep throaty sound that takes me back to peaks, and plains, and healing the foot.

Then from outside the tent comes the sound.

It happens so quickly, that my heart freezes in it's trappings and I cannot react. But almost instantly Kakashi has disappeared from beneath me, and is crouching on his haunches at the tent door armed and ready, a kunai held at throat level, pointing outwards like an omen. His face creased, eyes cold and calculating, the way he only gets when he's being Sharingan Kakashi. The Legendary Copy-nin. Good at what he does because he is cold, icy, distant, and doesn't mind a quick bloody kill.

The sudden change in him unnerves me. But somewhere inside something calls for me to move, and I fumble to get dressed. Kakashi dresses quickly, the kunai always poised for a sudden strike, and as he lowers the hitai-ate down over his eye; he's at the tent opening again, calm and waiting.

But I can't seem to get over this intent fear that seems to be knotting my wrists together, and looping my tongue around itself. My hands are clumsy, and I can't seem to remember what article of clothing goes where. Or what the zippers and the buttons do in the cyclone center of my panic.

The only sound besides my hopeless shuffling is Kakashi's steady, even breathing. His one visible eye shifts like a tracking beam left to right, and I can almost see the gears whirring, clicking, clacking, dissecting, analyzing in that amazing skull.

"Kakashi." I whisper. His jaw tightens, a muscle in the kunai holding forearm flexes taut and strong against the blue cloth sleeve. "The others are gone." he says carefully. "Genma. Asuma. Raidou. They're all gone."

I watch his face, watch the way he says the words, careful and structured as if he doesn't like the taste of them. As if he is testing the weight of them and they are large metal anvils. The fear in me turns to panic. Then comes the sound again outside of the ten, and this time I recognize it as the pounding of several pairs of feet dropping down from the trees. I grab a kunai firmly at the ready.

"Well, if the other's are gone then who's that outside the tent?" I whisper. "You think they might have come back for us?" Kakashi looks at me, then his one eye burnt black like burned sugar, holding a sweetness that wants to linger but is being purged out.

"Not at all." he says, and with that he slinks outside of the tent. I follow behind him. The campsite is empty. There's not a sight of human life besides us and the bowled over tents of the others left behind to lie on their sides and die, lemon yellow carcasses.

Kakashi stands stock still, marvelously still like a Grecian statue. The kunai waits patiently at his side, while his eye scans the surrounding area. My heart is throbbing like a tribal drum, a dance to an endangered beat, screaming for blood, promising blood. Ba-boom. Quiet it. Quiet. Remain calm….

The sky above the clearing looks like alabaster. Carved rock hard and inviolable, the perfect shade of robin's egg blue. The wind whips the leaves on the surrounding trees into a slave's dance of green, and pushes languidly at Kakashi's wolf's mane of hair.

Still, he doesn't move and I feel him straining to _listen_. And I can feel the panic beating against the walls of my brain, exclaiming it's siren's song loud and desperate to be heard. Outside of my head it's too quiet. The hairs on the back of my neck are erect. It's coming. Something's coming. Something…..

Behind me a flock of birds burst into flight. Kakashi spins around to face me. I see the slight flick of his wrist, but I don't register what the action connects to until I feel the violent arms encircle my neck from behind. The violent hands wielding a kunai that bites into my neck a little, before Kakashi's thrown kunai dives into the violent eyeball with a dead thunk. The assailant screams and falls away into oblivion.

The air is suddenly a color rush of chaos. I think Kakashi says "Behind you!" before I turn and come face to face with a foot. I duck, and the owner of the foot falls to his knees in the cavity of space created. But grace has escaped me and I plunge the kunai through the back of his neck, wrenching it free without much thought.

They're coming from everywhere, now.

From the trees torpedo five more. "Genjutsu!" I catch two of them, their bodies rendered motionless, their expressions immediately taking on the slack disbelief of alternate reality horror. But three substitute just out of reach, One of them appears a tangled web of body heat and chakra radiation behind me, the other radiates in front. As they swing I throw my body to the floor and can't hide the somewhat giddy smirk that pins itself to my face at hearing their idiotic bodies clunk together. Now just where was that other one?

Behind me. He wrenches my arms back tight, and twists before I can react, and in the throes of the pain, I can't do anything but scream. I feel a thick boot in my back and he pulls back on my arms using his foot to apply pressure with the force of something ravenous. The hungry fire that spreads through my shoulder blades licking and devouring scorches me alive.

When something pops and corkscrews loose blackness crowds in on my consciousness; cutting my vision into fringes, like little cut out paper snowflakes. I'm no longer aware of my body or the pain, now. All solidity has become a dull ache in the back of my mind, as the tormentor still gripping my useless arms pulls me neck back by my hair, until his dry stubbly face is electroshocking my own. And cheek to cheek he whispers to me "Mmm, girl." before something hard and sharp connects with my skull, rattling it out of it's comfort zone. Wet warmth begins to drain down my chin onto my neck, but I can't be sure if it's a tongue or a lick of blood.

There's a ringing fierce and shrill in my ears, and the foggy in and out focus of my vision is the only thing that counteracts the pain. The man releases his grip on my arms, but for some reason the rest of my body refuses to move when I beg it to. It's too much pain just to turn my head, and now I'm sure it's blood pooling in the creases of my neck, an oasis of red at the dip of my collarbone.

I just lie there, pressed flat and thin, a body bag of dust on the fringe of returning to it's likeness. I feel rough hands lock like shackles around my ankles, where the imprint of those "sorry" kisses now feels like a very vivid dream. But I can't resist as he drags me towards the other men. There are about ten or twenty of them. All snarling eyes and jack o' lantern teeth smiles. They are lions, they are vultures. And Kakashi's lies forlorn like a piece of shredded meat in the middle of them.

One of them holds him up, strong arms cupping his arms behind his neck, and the other take turns hitting him. A jeer. A punch. A kick. A cheer. A huge boot to the gut connects so powerfully that the sound echoes through the trees, scaring the birds into flight again. And Kakashi bends over, soundless and vomit's a rush of blood into the grass.

"Leave him alone!" I scream. They turn to me some livid with indignation, some hungry with anger. One smiling.

"A girl?" the smiling one asks me. He steps towards me then with slow suspenseful footfalls. Behind him the man holding Kakashi's arms pulls him upright. His eyes lock on mine for a second and then I see something there, that I have never in my life seen thee before. Fear.

"And a pretty one at that." coos the smiler. "You his lover, eh? I guess him to be the leader. They're all dressed similarly in dark lightweight clothing. But something about him, about his scent, about the look in his eyes is different. Pure thirsty malice. Pure animal. .

His eyes are on me. Studying me like a lion about to give chase. As if reading my mind, licking his lips he says his eyes flashing like dancing flames "Delectable prey." He nods to a man behind him a small cluster in the pack, and from his blackness the droid pulls something long, shiny. Something metal like a metal rod…a metal bat. A…God, please no.

"Stop. She's a woman. Didn't your mother teach you any respect?"

Kaksahi speaks out bodly, spitting blood out of the side of his mouth. The leader turns back to look at him, looks at me and his laughter is rich and full. "So, you'd rather I take you instead let me guess, Loverboy?"

"That would be ideal."

I try to say NO. DON'T. STOP. But I don't. I don't say anything. I can't say anything. Because the man holding the bat cranks his arm back. And the brute is still holding Kakashi's arms behind his back. And Kakashi is just standing there, looking directly into the leader's eyes. And God, please no. .

I turn away when the thing connects. It sounds like bones being crunched in a large black jaw. I scream. I'm crying. Sobbing. "Stop! Please!" The man who dragged me boxes me over the head again. And the ringing comes trembling back in, but I don't care. All I see now in front of me is blood. Lifelessness. Limp. Face down. Blood. Blood. Blood.

"Hit him again."

"No! NO!" A slap. A punch. Something hard and violent against the side of my face. I bite my lip, but there is only _his_ blood. All I see…all that I can hear is the dull thwack of metal against bone. The breaking, tearing, the life..less..ness…..

"Again." I scream. Again. Again. Kakashi is not moving now. Not even the twitch of a finger. The beast holding his arms has released and still he does not move. And those vultures. Those grinning jackals standing sentinel around his body. Around his…that…destroyed beauty. The sobs are ringing out of me. Are ripping me open. I try to get to my feet. Try to claw my way towards him, but the ever present violent hand knocks me breathless again. And the fire bloom of pain spreads openly blossomed along my shoulders, now. I'm crying.

The leader kicks Kakashi in the stomach. But there is nothing. No resistance. No oomph of pain. No movement . Nothing. He grips the beautiful silver head and lifts him up. The mask is full of blood. Enough to possibly drown in. The man peels it down, and smears the blood away from those delicate features almost tenderly with his hands.

Kakashi flinches at the touch. He flinches. And I can see that one eye rolling back like slot machine screens in his head. But moving. Struggling, but moving now. "Kakashi." I breathe.

"Lookie here, men." says The Leader. "We've got ourselves a pretty boy ninja." he flicks a kunai out from somewhere hidden and holds it up to the light inspecting it, turning it over and examining it's casing as if he had never laid eyes on anything so miraculous before. The sunlight bounces off of the stout blade and magnifies his maniacal grin, until it gleams horrifically wide and bright, a devil's lantern.

"This is just a personal opinion of mine." he says, guiding the kunai slowly, a missile towards that extravagantly placed together face. I notice Kakashi's ragged breathing, the rough rise and fall of his chest. The Leader grins impossibly wider "But I never did think shinobi were meant to be pretty."

There is no blood left in my body. There is nothing. Nothing. Only a shard of a prayer, a fragment of faith so tiny and sharp in itself that it cuts my hand to hold on to it. Only God, please. He digs the tip of the blade into Kakashi's cheek, pressing in just enough to draw a bead of blood, then draws a careful line up, up, up into his hairline; the blood coming quickly to soothe the wound as if assuaging a scorned lover. That rolling brown eye closes and Kakashi swallows hard.

No.

"Any last words?" asks the Leader. The silence is an axe murderer. A grave digger. A pall bearer. The silence is a savior. "Yes." says Kakashi simply.

"Look me in the eyes."

He reaches up slowly warily for the hitai-ate and pushes it aside. And Leader's eyes get sucked into that one red one. And time has ceased to exist for us. And the toma begin to spin in the eye, whirling, whirling, whirling. And I don't know what Leader sees there. If it is a painful life, or a sudden death, or resurrection and after. But his face becomes something else. Something new. Horrified and different. And he tries to back up. To pull away, but I can smell it in the air. The blood coming. The heat. The heat. The crackle. The….chakra.

The chakra.

The smell of burning flesh, and I see the white hot electricity frothing in that slowly charring palm,.where the flesh is seared and peering back to make way for the electricity. I see it in the nanoseconds before the actions become too fast to follow.

"Lightning Blade!" Palm to chest, explosion of light. I will never forget the smell of singed body fat beginning to cook and curdle like bacon. The consistency of the chakra touched blood, thick and heavy spilling and raining in the air like syrup. The other men fall like night over Kakashi, then as their leader convulses dying on the ground. Dead.

I will never forget the look in Kakashi's eyes. The determination, the…adoration. The Love. When he looks at me. When they are all on him. Hitting. Stabbing. Kunai. Blood. Kakashi. And he looks at me and says "I can read the other's chakra positions from here. I'll substitue you there, Kurenai."

Like it is all okay. Like nothing matters but this. Like it does not matter that as he speaks, they are stabbing him, the life juices dripping out of him. "No, Kakashi! Don't you dare!" I scream at him. I choke on sobs. Raging. But the vision of him becomes just that. As time pulls to transcend space and location. And I am caught in taut bands of chakra. And those deft fingers forming hand signs. And those lovely, lovely eyes giving me that effulgence, one last time for this journey. For this. "Stop! Don't you dare!"

But he does.

**Well, well, well, how do you like me now, eh? LOL, jk. But yes, sometimes things go for the better or the worse. Poor KakaKure…but the story's not over yet. Well, not quite. But feel free to get ur revenge by hating me already, MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! ONWARD!!! Next chap. REVIEW as usual my pretties ^.^**


	16. Asuma: Hero

Hero

_**Would you mind if I hurt you?**_

_**Understand that I need to**_

_**Wish that I had other choices **_

_**than to harm the one I love ….**_

_**What have you done, now?**_

She ain't put together right. Not all the way put together. That's the first thing I see when she just drops down through the trees. We're movin' fast through tree fingers, and brambles kissin' at us and she just comes down all fallin' apart.

Startles Genma half to death. And Raidou's the only got enough since to drop down next to her. When I get down there, he's holdin' her head up in his ugly scarred up hands like a regular old hero. When him and ol' pussy eyes are just as guilty as leavin' her back there as I am.

And I don't know if her neck's broken or what, but she can't hold her head up straight. Keeps wobblin' back and forth like it's too heavy. Or like she ain't got no bones. Ragdoll or something. Both her arms been broken at the shoulders. I see that right off. Somebody snapped 'em like popsicle sticks. She's got blood droolin' out her mouth and her eyes are open, but she ain't seein' nothing….she ain't….

"It's the chakra portal. She's still a bit delusional from the substitute. So it wasn't her own doing. Kakashi must have substituted her here." says Raidou, ever the frickin' analyst. If old one eye _did_ do this, I wonder what kinda shape he's in right now. Can't be no better than hers. But he played the hero. You gotta give it 'em, he played the hero to the forsaken end. Pussy.

"We've got to break her out of it. Talk to her, Asuma. She'll recognize you best." Raidou's sayin', givin' me that crazy scarred up look. He's lookin' at me, and for some reason I'm findin' it hard to swallow. And I kneel down next to her where her legs are stickin' out all pale and still like they don't belong to her.

Like they don't belong to no livin' body. And I look in her face, but I don't see nothin' that reminds me even remotely of the woman I used to bang around or beat around. Except for that red, red mouth. Ain't too sure it's not blood instead a lipstick, now though.

I touch her foot. "Kurenai." She jerks awake. I jump back. Her eyes keep on my face while her legs start movin' all reckless. When she talks, some reddish spittle comes out, and the pussy jumps back like a skittish kitten, while Raidou keeps his ugly hands under, around back of her neck.

'Cause I notice for the first time she's got a bash in back of her head. And blood down her neck like a regular ol' hair ribbon. Yet and after all this, you know the first thing she says to me? She looks right at me and says

"Kakashi?"

"Nope, Asuma." Surprise. "No." Cough. "Kakashi….Kakashi!" Cough.

"I think she means he needs help or is in trouble or something." says Raidou the Einstein, lookin' up at me I'm gonna be bowled over by his frickin' genius or something. I look at kurenai, but her eyes are closed again like they never opened and never will.

"Okay." I say.

"Don't worry, she's stable." Raidou says. But I ain't worryin'. "Okay." I say.

Ain't no ninja that's lived a day can say he never seen no kinda carnage, blood, and guts, and stuff. Some guy tell you that, he's lyin'straight to your face. But, it's been a while since, I seen the kinda death we see when we get to that campsite. I mean bodies charred and lyin' everywhere. Just roasted like pig or turkey. Not like human. Ain't nothing human about this. The smell in the air is wild stuff. Sizzlin' and cracklin' like electricity. Smells like chakra charged sex, and that's pretty nasty.

Man, gotta be like twenty or so bodies there. And in the middle of it is _him_. Half bad, half the hair singed off his head. Half silver, half nothing. Lying face down in the dirt and swimming in dried blood. Guts. Coming out. Of an open stomach. Ahh, this is nasty. He's got these puncture wounds all over. All head crushed a little bit like a smashed watermelon. Puncture wounds in him all over. Deflated like a balloon.

Kurenai starts cryin' screamin'. She kinda leaps out of Raidou's arms, drags herself over to _him_, cradlin' that head cryin' cryin'. Genma turns away and throws 's just standin' there. And me? Well, me…

What was once beautiful, it's now definitely destroyed ….

What have I done?

***Funeral music playing* Just kidding….but could Kakashi possibly be alive after that? Or is he dead?!? I mean come on guys use common sense. MUAHAHAHAHAHA. I love playing with your darling little minds. Don't go away because there is still more to come. We've got to finalize Kakashi's fate and there is yet to see how it ALL ends. You **_**will**_** keep reading won't you? ^.^ Oh yeah and please review. Righty, tighty! One more thing..the next few chapters are all one big bundle. They should all be read one after the other I mean so….I'm going to be updating the entire rest of the story all at once in the next update. AREN'T YOU EXCITED?!?**


	17. Tear Me Open

Tear Me Open

_**Flax seeds, they tear me open and supposedly you could crawl right through me….**_

"Clear!"

The Kakashi that I see on that gurney, stretched out, strapped down, and pale like a lab specimen; is not the lover with the dreamer's touch, not the shinobi with the devil's eyes, not the analyst with the gorgeous brain, not the smiling sleeping face. Not Kakashi.

He is not anything, but a blob of meat. An empty house, windows open, but dark behind the lashes. Curtains drawn on the lack of furniture. On the lack of life. The color has even drained from his hands, from the pink tips. The once pink tips that blushed a baffling shade of persimmon in the Fire Country heat.

Nothing about him is right. The hands are too quiet. Too still, they don't dance. The eyes don't leer behind the eggshell fabric of their lids. The mouth does not cup humor against it, curving ever so slightly into that crooked smirk.

He is there, but gone. He just looks…different. He just looks empty. I see it. Lady Tsunade sees it, too. As the crowd of medic ninja create a sterile gloved army around her, Shizune at her elbow, Tsunade pumps her fists full of white hot chakra again.

"Clear! Now!" she bellows, eyes alive and burned bright, a sterling silver in the panic light of that frenzy, fisted energy. Shizune rips Kakashi's vest and shirt away, and Tsunade pounds those fists against his chest. The force jackknifes Kakakshi's body upward. It rattles like a kicked wooden plank against the metal gurney and then is still.

The smell of the chakra burning like sacrificed oils makes the air thick with ambience. The surge glitters, a networkof blue and purple veins darting like impish butterflies just under the skin covering his chest before it disappears. Then nothing. Shizune's eyes are wide and open and wet. Brown and wet like an all encompassing mudslide.

But I am invincible. I have been destroyed. I feel nothing. I float in a cradle of numbness that rocks me tight and strokes my hair and promises to never let me go. To never let me want, desire, hurt again.

'_Kakashi I love you. More than…I don't know…anything. And if anything ever happened to you I would die."_

Feel nothing.

Next to me Asuma chews his thumb and cannot look. His eyes are red and puffy, and he looks away. He looks behind. He looks at the medic ninja with their faces tight like latex. He looks anywhere but at the gurney where the empty body lies motionless.

"Lady Tsunade." Shizune says gently.

"Quiet."

Her brow is furrowed. Her eyes glow with something strong. White. Hard. Her hands begin to glow again, the immense chakra there coats the air thick and heavy, and everyone standing too close is forced a step back from the pure pulsation of it. She lowers her hands a little. "Come on, Kakashi." she breathes. And lowers her hands onto his chest.

Shock. Jerk. Nothing. Flat. Pale. Corpse.

Numb.

Inside the hollow digs deeper. Sharper. I'm bleeding out somewhere in there I know. "Clear!" Shock. Jerking. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

The tears come. Unwanted, but they come. Down my cheeks. Fast. Stinging. It hurts. God, why does this have to hurt so bad? Why? Please take away this pain.

'_Please don't cry. I won't ever let anyone hurt you like that again. Believe me….if something happened to you I….would….die."_

The emergency room door is flung open behind us. Heads turn, eyes catch her just as she loses her balance, stumbling in. Anko coming in, hair wild, eyes puffy, holding one hand under that blossomed belly, ready to burst like a fat tire. At the sight of Kakashi's jerking empty body her knees buckle.

I catch her, I grab her arm and pull her to me. Our arms encircle one another. My hand goes to her belly. Our cheeks pressed together meld the tears into one river. It's destiny. What was and what was to become meet here now at what can never be again.

Again.

We share the womb. We share the tears. The sleeping face. We share this pain.

"Clear!"

"Lady Tsunade, please….he's gone."

"No! Clear!"

"Lady Tsunade….he's….

"Kakashi Hatake come on! You're not dying on me you selfish mother!"

"Lady Tsunade…."

They move forward on her, even as she raises her arms for another go. Even as the body still convulses, the chakra a dying fireworks show across that creamy sky slice of chest. The medic ninja take her elbows and began to pull her away, for some reason that cannot be understood, she lifts her arms to wipe away the ferocious tears in those vivid eyes and

"Clear!"

She pounds her glowing hands into his chest again. And watches the body jerk as they pull her away, and Shizune with her mud slide eyes moves to cover the face with a blue sheet and hide the stillness.

Then

_Beep….Beep….Beep…_

Anko moves, mouth open, the tears making tire marks down her cheek preserving this wreck. My breath catches in my throat. Asuma looks. And Tsunade pauses there in the door, elbows still gripped away from her, some ferocity left in that smile.

"Kakashi…."

"Yes." says Shizune, and peels the sheet back from the face again. "We've got a pulse."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Anko can't stay I do. I stay with him always. Watching him sleep. Watching the stillness of that face no longer shining. Flat because the heart is pumping, but the lungs don't work on their own, and the brain has shut down.

Down Down Down.

The machines do all work. Making all the noise. Do all the moving. Anko cries. And cries. And cries. Runny nose and excavated eyes puffing out like picked treasures. She says "If he knew…if he had a choice he would not want to live like _this_."

'_If anything ever happened to you…I…would….die." _

Deep down inside somewhere I know she's right.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But the memories and the words written in along the walls of my skull are not enough. The thirst is unquenchable. Watching that face. That broken, empty face like a tipped over glass who's juices have seeped free, is enough to rip a person open inside. They say if he does not make any progress soon they'll pull the plugs. Which is to say that I will die.

The days become like years it seems. And the hole inside grows bigger and deeper and wider. And one night I'm sitting there beside his bed listening to the whirr of the machines. The artificial lungs pulling, the heart pumping, the organs churning. And in the darkness looking at the pale splendor of his face, the hollows, the holes, the nothingness where there once was light I see him open his eyes.

"K-….Kakashi?!"

"….Kurenai….." his voice is a wheeze. A desperate cough that tugs his breath away. His face fills vividly with pain. "Don't try to talk." I beg him. I stand up and lean over to be closer. The monitors and machines are going crazy.

"No….I….need….to tell you…" he stops to breathe. Hard , laborious the sound like wind pushing through a punched tire. The pain weaves baskets in and out of his face with an incomprehensible misery that lasts a second and fades, lasts and fades. My self is splintering, I stroke his cold cheek as if that could comfort him. His effort at a smile rips me asunder.

He gasps for air a little, shifts and the pain makes him cry out.

"Kakashi! Let me get you a nurse….do you…"

He stops me quietly, shaking his head, sigh…a wheeze comes from something collapsed inside. "No…just give me…your hand….and…lean in close, please…" his fingers flex and just this once again began to tremble. In anticipation, in memory, I don't know. But it's certain that I have to put my hand in his.

And his fingers lock in mine and tremble there like the flit of a caged butterfly. I lean in until his lips full and soft are pressed against the lobe of my ear. I hear his voice clearly for the one precious second that it takes to say this and in this instant it is clear and devoid of pain. Just pure. Just at peace.

"I love you, Kurenai Yuuhi."

"Kakashi!" but his hand goes foot-less and still, the butterfly wing dance silenced. And the next day Lady Tsunade instructs the medical ninja to yank the machines.


	18. The Climb

**The Climb**

_**Now walking to the sun**_

_**I calculate what I had done like jumping from the bow, yeah**_

_**Just to prove that I knew how, yeah**_

The climb up to the rooftop of the Suicide Tower is several flights of stairs, and several thoughts climbing stairs in my head. Sliding slipping falling.

Down Down Down,

Breaking,

From way up here I can see everything. When now it doesn't matter. Nothing at all. Because all that matters here to me is lying in a hospital bed with life giving tubes being siphoned from It's cracking shell.

It…he…

Ineffable, the tears won't stop coming. As I look around me, as I look down I begin to notice the faces of people I once knew. And people I might one day have known. I have the sudden jolt the will to turn around and go back. Back down the stairs. Back to him, to salvage the remnants of a flesh and believing in an instant that everything just might be alright if I'm strong.

I quickly realize I am foolish to believe this.

I would rather die than have this hole in my life.

I step towards the fringes of the roof, stick a toe out experimentally, testing the weight of what's to come. The sudden liberality, the fulfilled promise in that wide gaping mouth, smiling and full of open air.

I should jump. I should not.

I should……


	19. Kakashi:Afterlife

Afterlife

_**For a fortune he'd quit**_

_**But it's hard to admit**_

_**How it ends and begins**_

_**Oh his face is a map of the world….**_

_**From yesterday it calls him**_

_**But he doesn't want to read the message Here**_

If there was ever…..something…..worth….fighting for….in my life….

My life is it…..

this is it.

_.Blackness._

She is it. She. Her. Face…..see it….Got…to…

I….

_.Blackness._

It hurts. God, it hurts. Oh God. It Hurts. God?

She….It….hurts…She…..Her….

This is it…………..No…..I…..I…NEED…

_.Blackness._

To open my eyes.

"Kakashi?"

She's looming above me here. In this…grave…no…bed? Bed. White stuff…ahh…sterile bedding. White floor. IV hook-ups. I hate hospitals.

She's holding my hand tight in her own. She has a large round belly. She has gold eyes….Gold? That's not right is it?

"Kurenai?"

"….No…."

"Where's Kurenai?"


	20. The End

I jump.


	21. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

**Okay, guys that's the end of our story, feel free to send me hate mail now, hehehehe. Um…I hope you ALL liked it. And in case you're a little bit upset I'm sorry, but I don't particularly go for storybook endings all the time you know? When does life ever work like thatMUAHAHAHAHAHA sorry couldn't resist. Please continue to read my other fanfics. Or give me suggestions if you any particular Naruto character(s) you'd like to personally see me right. I'm not working on anything right now, and I'll probably be bored so please if you have anything *suggestive eyebrow raise* Lay it on me, bAbEy, LOL. Oh yes, special thanks to all of the people who took the time out to message and review EVERY chapter you know you are hyuk hyuk so out of laziness I won't go into it, but ehhh…oh yeah Special thanks to silver-eyed who tried so hard to review even without a functioning computer 3 and Scorpio warrior who was my main inspiration for continuing the story. Geez, I feel like I'm giving an award's speech here, might as well thank my parents Hahahahaha. Sincerely,**

**..down 3**


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